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It’s true, what the title says above – Evernote literally busted out the baby powder and gave me the ole “one-two.” And, I’m not ashamed to say that I liked it … or moreover the present tense – liking it!

What’s sad is that it’s actually taken me a couple of years to actually figure out Evernote’s true potential, in a sense of what I could truly be using it for. You see, I’ve been nickle-and-diming my way through Evernote. I’d pop it open every once in a blue moon if I’d happened to remember and drop a note or two. Anytime a new app or webservice would come about, I’d give it a try just to see how it’d interact with Evernote … then I’d be on my way again.

In a true, all-out irony, I didn’t have my “coming to Evernote” moment until a couple days ago. I was talking to one of my newer guys about storyboarding and scriptwriting when I suggested he take a look at Evernote. I explained to him the basics (at least the basics as I understood them then (all two days ago)), and told him that it might be a tool that would hang well from his toolbelt.

After talking to him, and explaining some of the benefits of Evernote, that’s when it truly hit me – how could I be a good leader and mentor and make a recommendation on something that I barely had the basic concept of? Truth be told, I couldn’t. So like a crack fiend, I’ve started on an Evernote bender that’s still got no end in sight.

Lynda.com

Like a fist bump, Lynda can make you feel all good and tingly inside and is usually one of my first reference stops to get a general feel for an application or service. Her content for Evernote was a bit dated, but it did give me some new insights that I hadn’t thought of or even considered. Total course time was less than two hours, but worth it.

ScreenCastsOnline.com

Once I was done with Lynda, I headed over to check out my buddy Don McCallister, where he hosted a three-part series on Evernote 5, just this past January. It was here that I truly got the Evernote Bug. Don’s screencasts are always top-notch and he certianly didn’t hold anything back this time either.

Evernote Forums

It was about this time that I began perusing the Evernote forums, trying to obtain as much knowledge as possible while scrolling through post after post … I believe my internet-osmosis was in overdrive. I’ve picked up quite a few tips-and-tricks in these last few hours, not to mention some workflow ideas that have blown me away.

Now I’m nowhere close to being an Evernote savant (unless it’s of the idiot variety), but I know more today than I did yesterday. And, I know a lot more now than I knew when I suggested Evernote to one of my employees.

I am quite interested to see where this productive journey into Evernote will lead, and I’m also extremely interested in hearing how some of you use Evernote for the following:

Social Business

Team Task Management

Profit & Loss, Expenses, Budget

Any tips or insight is greatly appreciated. Now, back to the grind in an effort to flip the roles that the title of the post implied.

Michael

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SemperMMA - At the risk of one or more other readers of posts in this forum demonstrating my next couple of comments wrong with examples, I'm going to make a couple generalizations about what Evernote can do for you (and what it can't).

 

Evernote is excellent at "capturing" information (text, images, audio, etc.) from a variety of sources and making it easy for users to "find" the information at a later time for reference or "sharing".

 

However, Evernote does not, per se, "manipulate" information itself. For example, it does not do arithmetic. It does not sort information. You cannot construct  diagrams with Evernote.

 

You mention 3 topics in your post that you anticipate / hope to use Evernote for. I would respond like this: 

  • Social Business - Evernote will probably be able to help you with this, but it depends on how you define this topic.
  • Team Task Management - Evernote will help with the information related to this topic, but don't expect it to develop task plans or critical paths.
  • Profit & Loss, Expenses, Budget - Evernote will be able to "capture" / "store" this kind of information, but it will not make any calculations for you.

I hope you find this response helpful and give you some insight as to how to spend your time and effort with Evernote.

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  • 2 weeks later...

While I'm still rather new to using Evernote for everything (as they so hope) I can tell you one thing about Expenses/Budget. You can't have it do math, but you can attach a file (like an Excel Spreadsheet) and access it from any device and edit it there. I have a rather complicated math/financial spreadsheet that I have attached in Evernote so I can check and adjust my figures on the go. The biggest issue I have found is that if you don't save and exit the file, it will not update the Evernote version (yes, I learned that the hard way when I opened my files and found old information in the middle of a meeting...). Also, if you don't sync after the update, you may or may not have your information (depends on how often you have EN set to sync automatically)

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