(Archived) Evernote & GTD

[acg 0]

After a month using Evernote I must say I'm impressed. It works. While the app certainly can do more; what it does do it does well.

I tend toward a modified GTD System into which I've incorporated Evernote. To prevent my feeble memory from surmounting any good ideas, I outlined the full extant of my organization including Evernote's place.

Completing the document, I realized other users of Evernote might find it helpful. If so, I would enjoy hearing of your improvements.

http://www.evernote.com/pub/acgeller/ACG

- ACG

[agemma 0]

Thanks for sharing this!

I find very useful to spy into other people's GTD implementation - over the years, it really helped to make mine better.

As far as improvements - the only suggestion that I would have is: keep it simple®.

The most frequent mistake I made in my year-longs history of refining my system, was definetely overoptimization.

In theory it makes sense to have a very complete and detailed system, in practice, at least in my case, the better kills the good.

With my currently rather stable implementation, I opted for a very simplified implementation. I used to have up to a dozen or more categories, now I trimmed the thing down to two: @desk and @onthego (i.e., errands).

As far as digital reference, I now basically throw everything in the same basket: (one folder for all the files, and Evernote for anything else (and I don't heavily tag, only basic ones).

I realized that with a good desktop search program + EN, I can find on the fly everything I need 99.9% of the times - thus saving the time and energy I used to spend to keep tidy and current my folder/tags structure.

(For the paper stuff, it does not really work - that's an area where I am still looking for the right solution. The _best_ solution would be to just go totally digital, but I am really not there yet, unfortunately.)

[EMarkM 0]

I'm totally digital (apart from the odd bit of filing at home and work, obviously, although my personal bank statements are purely electronic now) using a combination of Evernote and Things by Cultured Code.

I use both the Mac and iPhone clients of both these apps, and highly recommend them.

All my personal finance is handled by Pocket Money on the iPhone, which fits in with the rest of my GTD/personal management system nicely.