(Archived) How did you start using Evernote?

[sshih 18]

There is a lot of talk around updates, issues, how-tos, and the like, but I wanted to take a moment and go back to the beginning and ask, how did you start using Evernote?

For me, I started using Evernote to make daily to-do lists. I'm currently a college student, so things get pretty hectic during the school year. At one point, I was jotting down to-do's on post-its, in my agenda, on my phone, on my Mac dashboard, in my journal, etc. At one point, I had enough. I just wanted everything in one place. *Cue Evernote Once I started using Evernote to make lists, I discovered more and more ways to use it in other areas of life like clipping articles from the Web to keep track of research and saving images of craft or gift ideas.

I feel like we each have a story behind our Evernotes. What's yours?

[George Goodman 10]

I started using it to capture notes from 1on1 meetings at work. I quickly discovered it was a great thing for capturing (and later retrieving) receipts, user manuals, ... and more.

[gazumped 11,652]

I try out lots of software in my constant search to be the Laziest Person on the Planet. I first tried Evernote ages ago - not sure how long, but it was a portable version - to compare with various other personal databases I used. No disrespect to Evernote, but my kind of a quick trial was pretty cursory - if a major attraction didn't stand up and sing to me when I poked and prodded, I back-burnered the app until "I have more time" (ie never). I got through lots of back-burners. Then I took a good long look at my existing 'external brain' which was a library of files on shelves, a couple of filing cabinets and an increasing number of boxes on floors, not to mention a few piles of books and press cuttings and some taller piles of papers that I hadn't had time to cut the cuttings out of yet.. Something Had to Be Done.

I dusted off the various databases I'd looked at and dismissed most of them as too clunky to shovel a volume of paper into quickly. Evernote however had all these dandy add-ons to import different formats, and OCR, and would OCR pictures as well as documents... did I hear singing?

So I started converting my physical external brain into a digital one and found it even easier than I had hoped. Two years later I'm still going - and I have an extra room!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I started using Evernote in 2008 before going on a trip to Japan. I wanted some kind of device (the Sony Clie I had bought there years before was just not going to cut it) and I got the iPod Touch as a gift (amazingly, it cost less and did more than the Clie, and I didn't need that stylus anymore). I downloaded Evernote and started using it for itineraries, records of meetings, reading notes, and just about everything else that involved text. Back in those days we had no copy/paste on the iPod (it ended up being a ten dollar upgrade - Apple wisely stopped charging us for these). Evernote also lacked offline notes (if I remember correctly). I liked it, but ended up only using it to jot down notes on the go. I made lots of notes, including some on my first meeting with a colleague, who was not using Evernote at the time, but would become a power user after he purchased an iPhone.

It wasn't until three years later, in the summer of 2011, that my usage really picked up. That same colleague I had first met in 2008 showed me how he was using it with his research. I realized I had greatly underestimated the application's potential, I created a new account on the spot (I wasn't sure exactly what would happen if I upgraded the old one), and I purchased premium that day. I also realized that I had allowed myself to get pulled into the Apple ecosystem without taking advantage of syncing among devices (I upgraded from a netbook to a Macbook Pro that spring after stopping into an electronics store in Osaka on my way home for several days and eventually being greeted with "welcome home" (okaeri nasai) by the staff who had gotten used to me stopping in each day to ponder).

Once I started syncing with Evernote, that sealed the deal for me, because I could work on my iPod Touch, iPad (Apple got me there too), Macbook, Windows netbook (I still fired him up to do OCR on PDFs and other processing grunt work), and my office machine (an old Dell). It was quite liberating to be able to work seamlessly across platforms, and when I picked up an Android phone in fall 2011 (a vain attempt at resisting the allure of Apple) the first thing I installed was Evernote.

For me, the appeal of Evernote is its ability to hold everything (other programs cannot hold file type X or cannot easily incorporate web clippings) on any device (no one else is on all of the platforms I use). I went paperless a few years ago, but it wasn't until moving up to Evernote premium in 2011 that everything finally clicked and became easy. Now, it would be difficult to imagine going back to cobbling together a bunch of apps to do my work, and as far as I can tell, no combination of apps would give me all the functionality I get with Evernote. It is a pretty amazing product

[sshih 18]

Awesome, thanks for sharing, everyone! Keep the stories coming