Eventually - too many tags?

[SahilC 13]

Hey EN Community!

 

So the way I've been going about organizing my Evernote is this - current projects are Notebooks (for example - ProjectABC is a notebook). 

When the project is done, I make an "Intro" note with a description of the project as well as dates, etc, and tag the note as well as all other notes in the "ProjectABC" notebook with the tag "projectabc" and dump them in my Archive notebook.

 

The tag "projectabc" will then be nested under the tag "Projects".

 

When I tag notes, I think of the familiar file structure. As with the example above, I'd have a main tag called "Projects", and under that, "projectABC", and under that all the tags that are used in the project's notes.

 

This works great for big items like projects. But when it comes to small groups of things, for example 5 pictures that I want to group together, what would I do with that? Tag them "picturesABC" and dump into my Archive notebook? What happens when I have tons of these kinds of little groups?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

 

 

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

One reason I don't tag much is that we don't currently have an interface that enables us to effectively manage the 100,000 tags that are possible.

Taking advantage of Evernote's search capabilities, and considering the relative importance of each grouping, you might want to consider unique character strings as a way to tie together stuff. You find one, you find them all, and no organizational overhead is needed.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/24390-using-random-codes-in-notes-as-an-aggregation-tool/?p=128235

[jbenson2 2,147]

edit: just realized after posting this that GM's above post covers some of these comments.

 

Evernote is flexible and can be bent in many different directions to solve specific issues.

 

I am a big user of tags - over 1,500 right now. I use a parent / child hierarchy tag system to manage them, similar to the way you are handling projects.

 

Company

com-ford

com-ibm

com-target

 

Insurance

ins-car

ins-dental

ins-house

ins-life

ins-medical

 

Personal

per-exercise

per-gift

per-house

per-travel

 

But for small groups of notes with a common theme, I won't bother creating a tag for them.

 

* Sometimes I will use a common keyword in each note to group them for future searches.

 

* Or if there are just a couple notes, I will paste the URL link to each other.

 

* Or my preferred method for notes I want grouped together I will use a custom search code.

For example, I had a new stove / microwave installed.

I added a search code GKQFB63Y to each appropriate note.

This lets me review all the associated notes (notes containing comparison prices, installation information, actual receipt, carpenter phone calls, carpenter bill, oven warranty,  

Whenever I see the term search code followed by a string of characters, I know there are a group of notes linked together. 

 

I even use the search code technique in this forum. If you search for 47ER92, you will find many discussions on the Evernote Due Date feature (R.I.P.)

[JohnDM 122]

I personally . . . for me . . . I don't like the parent / child tag hierarchy (unless a tag is so complex in its meaning for something very special project)

 

 

 

Insurance

ins-car

ins-dental

ins-house

ins-life

ins-medical

 

 

Lets take a look at this example. I use a tag called Insurance" then apply these

car

dental

house

life_Insurance

medical

 

Ok this way requires you to assign  2 tags rather than 1, But when you search for things, The two tags make it a whole lot easier and more flexible.

 

What if I wanted to see ALL my notes on my bills for my car, not just insurance. I search "Tag:car Tag:bill    -- Bingo I got them all including my insurance. The other way I have to THINK, ok what tag do I need to search for,  . . oh yes, . . . tag:ins-car . ..  lets see . . .  ummm oh that's right tag:2013-Gov-tax-personal_property  oh wait I need the years before tax bill too so got to find my  tag:2012-Gov-tax-personal_property . . .  and let's see I need  . . . .. tag:car-maintenance.  This whole method just seems clunky to me

 

What if you wanted to see ALL your insurance notes together.

 

You can search Tag:Insurance  

 

or you can search "tag:ins-car tag:ins-dental tag:ins-house tag:ins-life Tag:ins-medical"    I like my way better

 

 

First of all I have a Table of contents page of all Major things -- I call them "Index Pages" and I give them the tag "- Index" (the dash space puts the tag near the top of the tag list)

 

Personally I think using "Table of Contents" or Index notes makes more sense than parent / child tag hierarchy

 

Let's take a look at my poor old PT Cruiser that has low mileage but starting to fall apart, This Index page  is tagged "- Index" and "Car".

At the top of the page I have a link to my other car's Index Page then I have listed out a table of contents links  to the history of the car. I went back and scanned all my work orders etc.

       

     

PT CRUISER - Index                       PT Cruiser License and VIN number

 

 www.Plates.Mo.Gov

=================

 

2015 June - PT Cruiser, License Plate stickers through

 

Temporary Motor Vehicle Registration Receipt - PT Cruiser - 5-13-14 - $27.75

 

2014 Personal Property Declaration

 

Personal Property Tax -- Jackson County - 2013, Cars - $394.01

[CalS 5,280]

SahilC,,

 

To your specific question, to me the answer is embedded in how you want to access those five photos and how many other picture groupings do you think you will have.  

1. You could consider a tag of Photos and let your note titles be specific, perhaps leading with the same verbiage for each group.  Or as some would do put Photos in the note title.  Tags for me though.
2. If you think you will have many occurrences of this type of grouping, you could consider a parent tag of Photos and child tags for whatever each grouping represents.  Or just stay with the one tag of Photos.
3. Not sure why the Archives construct though.  I would put the notes in the notebook(s) that facilitate how you would search, if not All Notes.

Sidebar, my preference would not be to put all tags of a project under that project's tag, that is unless you are sure the tags are unique for all projects.  As JohnDM points our there are some benefits not to having compound tags.  For example, in your case your base tag set would already be there anytime you started a new project, you would just have to assign them.  If for example you had a tag called Travel in your projects and you wanted to see all Travel across all projects it is a simple search.  

 

IMHO, whether you use keywords or tags. either should be as unique as possible.  Otherwise the data may not want to always fit into your construct.  Hence, for example, having a tag of Statements and a tag for every company from whence I get a statement let's me know all I have to do is add a company tag should I a add a service of some sort.  And I don't have to worry about any saved searches where part of the compound tag may make a difference.  

 

End of the day though, you may want to experiment and see what kind of methods best enable you to remember and find what you are searching.  Hope this helps.

[DutchPete 247]

One reason I don't tag much is that we don't currently have an interface that enables us to effectively manage the 100,000 tags that are possible.

Taking advantage of Evernote's search capabilities, and considering the relative importance of each grouping, you might want to consider unique character strings as a way to tie together stuff. You find one, you find them all, and no organizational overhead is needed.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/24390-using-random-codes-in-notes-as-an-aggregation-tool/?p=128235

 

After reading all your posts (not just the one above but others too) I still have not understood the functional difference between a random character code & a keyword. In other words, why go through the hassle of generating those codes when you can just choose a keyword that you can remember, contrary to a code.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

 

One reason I don't tag much is that we don't currently have an interface that enables us to effectively manage the 100,000 tags that are possible.

Taking advantage of Evernote's search capabilities, and considering the relative importance of each grouping, you might want to consider unique character strings as a way to tie together stuff. You find one, you find them all, and no organizational overhead is needed.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/24390-using-random-codes-in-notes-as-an-aggregation-tool/?p=128235

 

After reading all your posts (not just the one above but others too) I still have not understood the functional difference between a random character code & a keyword. In other words, why go through the hassle of generating those codes when you can just choose a keyword that you can remember, contrary to a code.

 

 

Hi. Keywords in the title or the body of the note are great. So are tags. But, sometimes (most of the time?) you have data in Evernote that you may not need to access much, if ever again, and it isn't worth the hassle of creating a tag. It certainly isn't worth the hassle of wading through thousands of tags you'll rarely, if ever use again. Random character strings eliminate false positives from generic keywords and ensure related data stays clumped together without having to go the next step of actually organizing stuff. The point is that you don't want to have to remember the keywords with your meat brain, but you do want to keep stuff clumped together somehow, just in case you need to revisit it.

 

A concrete example of this was provided by jbenson2 above. If you search for "due date" or some other keyword related to what we now know as "reminders" in Evernote, you will be inundated with information. Search for 47ER92 (the code jb appended to all of his posts on the topic) and you will find exactly what you want. Another example would be my current dilemma with the Surface Pro 3 -- should I buy it or not? I've clipped every major review available, I have my notes on using it the last day or two, and I have a few other odds and ends. It will "probably" be irrelevant next year, but just in case, I'll throw a random character string onto all of the related notes. If I do need to revisit the "project," I just need to find one note in the cluster, copy/paste the random code into the search, and I can wander through the notes again. Chances are, though, that I will never need to see these notes again, so there is no use incorporating them into my navigational scheme.

 

If Evernote had a more efficient interface for tags, I might be less inclined to use random character strings. As it is, though, I'd say anyone actually using 100,000 tags is probably having a pretty difficult time keeping stuff straight. 100,000 random character strings, though, imposes no particular burden on the user, in my opinion. Use them or not, you'll experience no problems with clutter.

[DutchPete 247]

 

 

One reason I don't tag much is that we don't currently have an interface that enables us to effectively manage the 100,000 tags that are possible.

Taking advantage of Evernote's search capabilities, and considering the relative importance of each grouping, you might want to consider unique character strings as a way to tie together stuff. You find one, you find them all, and no organizational overhead is needed.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/24390-using-random-codes-in-notes-as-an-aggregation-tool/?p=128235

 

After reading all your posts (not just the one above but others too) I still have not understood the functional difference between a random character code & a keyword. In other words, why go through the hassle of generating those codes when you can just choose a keyword that you can remember, contrary to a code.

 

 

Hi. Keywords in the title or the body of the note are great. So are tags. But, sometimes (most of the time?) you have data in Evernote that you may not need to access much, if ever again, and it isn't worth the hassle of creating a tag. It certainly isn't worth the hassle of wading through thousands of tags you'll rarely, if ever use again. Random character strings eliminate false positives from generic keywords and ensure related data stays clumped together without having to go the next step of actually organizing stuff. The point is that you don't want to have to remember the keywords with your meat brain, but you do want to keep stuff clumped together somehow, just in case you need to revisit it.

 

A concrete example of this was provided by jbenson2 above. If you search for "due date" or some other keyword related to what we now know as "reminders" in Evernote, you will be inundated with information. Search for 47ER92 (the code jb appended to all of his posts on the topic) and you will find exactly what you want. Another example would be my current dilemma with the Surface Pro 3 -- should I buy it or not? I've clipped every major review available, I have my notes on using it the last day or two, and I have a few other odds and ends. It will "probably" be irrelevant next year, but just in case, I'll throw a random character string onto all of the related notes. If I do need to revisit the "project," I just need to find one note in the cluster, copy/paste the random code into the search, and I can wander through the notes again. Chances are, though, that I will never need to see these notes again, so there is no use incorporating them into my navigational scheme.

 

If Evernote had a more efficient interface for tags, I might be less inclined to use random character strings. As it is, though, I'd say anyone actually using 100,000 tags is probably having a pretty difficult time keeping stuff straight. 100,000 random character strings, though, imposes no particular burden on the user, in my opinion. Use them or not, you'll experience no problems with clutter.

 

 

The random character is only as accurate as your assigning to what you think of as relevant related data. But this can also be achieved with a keyword, either in the title or in the body of note. Doesn't it all come down to the user's accuracy of assigning the "marker" (be that a random character or keyword) correctly & consistently?

Pre-defined "keywords" like due dates are clearly not going to be useful, but we are talking about customised keywords vs random characters.

By the way, I cannot understand either how someone can use 1000s of tags efficiently, even with a nice nomenclature & nesting system, but that's just my opinion.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

 

 

 

One reason I don't tag much is that we don't currently have an interface that enables us to effectively manage the 100,000 tags that are possible.

Taking advantage of Evernote's search capabilities, and considering the relative importance of each grouping, you might want to consider unique character strings as a way to tie together stuff. You find one, you find them all, and no organizational overhead is needed.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/24390-using-random-codes-in-notes-as-an-aggregation-tool/?p=128235

 

After reading all your posts (not just the one above but others too) I still have not understood the functional difference between a random character code & a keyword. In other words, why go through the hassle of generating those codes when you can just choose a keyword that you can remember, contrary to a code.

 

 

Hi. Keywords in the title or the body of the note are great. So are tags. But, sometimes (most of the time?) you have data in Evernote that you may not need to access much, if ever again, and it isn't worth the hassle of creating a tag. It certainly isn't worth the hassle of wading through thousands of tags you'll rarely, if ever use again. Random character strings eliminate false positives from generic keywords and ensure related data stays clumped together without having to go the next step of actually organizing stuff. The point is that you don't want to have to remember the keywords with your meat brain, but you do want to keep stuff clumped together somehow, just in case you need to revisit it.

 

A concrete example of this was provided by jbenson2 above. If you search for "due date" or some other keyword related to what we now know as "reminders" in Evernote, you will be inundated with information. Search for 47ER92 (the code jb appended to all of his posts on the topic) and you will find exactly what you want. Another example would be my current dilemma with the Surface Pro 3 -- should I buy it or not? I've clipped every major review available, I have my notes on using it the last day or two, and I have a few other odds and ends. It will "probably" be irrelevant next year, but just in case, I'll throw a random character string onto all of the related notes. If I do need to revisit the "project," I just need to find one note in the cluster, copy/paste the random code into the search, and I can wander through the notes again. Chances are, though, that I will never need to see these notes again, so there is no use incorporating them into my navigational scheme.

 

If Evernote had a more efficient interface for tags, I might be less inclined to use random character strings. As it is, though, I'd say anyone actually using 100,000 tags is probably having a pretty difficult time keeping stuff straight. 100,000 random character strings, though, imposes no particular burden on the user, in my opinion. Use them or not, you'll experience no problems with clutter.

 

 

The random character is only as accurate as your assigning to what you think of as relevant related data. But this can also be achieved with a keyword, either in the title or in the body of note. Doesn't it all come down to the user's accuracy of assigning the "marker" (be that a random character or keyword) correctly & consistently?

By the way, I cannot understand either how someone can use 1000s of tags efficiently, even with a nice nomenclature & nesting system, but that's just my opinion.

 

 

 

(1) For me, I have no trouble locating notes I think are relevant to the particular project. Theoretically, Evernote will also do this with the relevant note feature, but I personally find it to be of extremely limited use in its current form (I've posted my criticisms elsewhere). 

 

(2) If keywords work for you, then that is great, but I find them to produce too many false positives on searches. There's no need to be consistent. It is usually a one-time thing for clusters of notes you probably won't even visit again. If it is a recurring thing, like jb's campaign to get due dates, then you might want to use a tag instead. Or, you might (as I do) stick it into a list of commonly used random character codes. It's up to you. 

[CalS 5,280]

Whichever marker you decide to use, tags, key words, or random character strings, they are basically honing devices, IMHO,  So 100,000 tags or markers of any sort doesn't make a lot of sense, particularly with an 100,000 note limit.  How many notes should be in a group to deserve a marker might be another question to stimulate some debate.

 

When honing, I don't see much difference in remembering a keyword or a tag, but random character strings seem to add a level of complexity, or at least another step or two (knowing I'm not going to be able to remember most things random).  In the Surface example above, I would mark them as PC.Stuff.  (The marker would be a tag in my case since I tend not to want to add things to a note that aren't native to the note, just me).  It would lump the notes in with other PC.Stuff for sure, but later when I might want to look back I've constrained the universe of results without taxing my memory too much.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Whichever marker you decide to use, tags, key words, or random character strings, they are basically honing devices, IMHO,  So 100,000 tags or markers of any sort doesn't make a lot of sense, particularly with an 100,000 note limit.  How many notes should be in a group to deserve a marker might be another question to stimulate some debate.

 

When honing, I don't see much difference in remembering a keyword or a tag, but random character strings seem to add a level of complexity, or at least another step or two (knowing I'm not going to be able to remember most things random).  In the Surface example above, I would mark them as PC.Stuff.  (The marker would be a tag in my case since I tend not to want to add things to a note that aren't native to the note, just me).  It would lump the notes in with other PC.Stuff for sure, but later when I might want to look back I've constrained the universe of results without taxing my memory too much.

 

The point of the random code, though is not to remember it! Don't tax your brain, just let it all go, and rely on Evernote search to sort it out. The fewer tags, the better, in my opinion. Now, if we had a more sophisticated way to wade through tags, I might be more amenable to the idea. But, "PC.Stuff" for something so ephemeral seems like unnecessary clutter to me. And, I wouldn't remember it! 

 

One option, though, might be to have these kind of throw-away tags appended with an "x-" or something at the beginning so that they don't make a mess of the interface, and they go at the bottom of the list outside of your regular tagging regime. 

[CalS 5,280]

GM,

 

To be sure I can understand the process, 1) search for "Surface" which leads me to the random keyword, 2) search the random keyword to get the list of notes?  That it?

 

If so, makes sense if I set up the random keyword one time for a group of notes (though it seems like a bit of note editing).  If I don't set them up all at one time though, then I may have to do the above search to find the random keyword to add it to the title or body of the new note (unless I remember the random keyword)?  Help me if I am not getting it.

 

Relative to PC.Stuff being ephemeral (assuming the lasting for a short duration definition), it is longer lasting for me.  I have 598 notes tagged that way (just checked) and they include anything related to my PCs whether hardware, software, tips and tricks, whatever, across the last 5 years.  Again, in my thinking it shrinks the universe of my eventual search.  Adding something to the title of a note is clutter to me.  

 

Safe to assume our personal preferences are why we do things differently.  

[s2sailor 2,193]

 

Whichever marker you decide to use, tags, key words, or random character strings, they are basically honing devices, IMHO,  So 100,000 tags or markers of any sort doesn't make a lot of sense, particularly with an 100,000 note limit.  How many notes should be in a group to deserve a marker might be another question to stimulate some debate.

 

When honing, I don't see much difference in remembering a keyword or a tag, but random character strings seem to add a level of complexity, or at least another step or two (knowing I'm not going to be able to remember most things random).  In the Surface example above, I would mark them as PC.Stuff.  (The marker would be a tag in my case since I tend not to want to add things to a note that aren't native to the note, just me).  It would lump the notes in with other PC.Stuff for sure, but later when I might want to look back I've constrained the universe of results without taxing my memory too much.

 

The point of the random code, though is not to remember it! Don't tax your brain, just let it all go, and rely on Evernote search to sort it out....

 

There is a piece to this discussion that I'm not getting.  Whether you use a tag or a random code, if you want to refer to it again in the future, you need a way to find it or remember it.  With tags you sort through your tag list until you find what you are looking for.  For random codes it seems to me that you either put all the codes in one note and then search through that to find what you want (seems similar to tags to me) or you rely on search to find a note with the random code and then do a second search on the random code to get the full set of notes that you want.

 

Unless there is another option that I'm missing I don't see any substantial difference between using tags or random codes and random codes require the additional step of generating the code. 

[CalS 5,280]

 

Unless there is another option that I'm missing I don't see any substantial difference between using tags or random codes and random codes require the additional step of generating the code. 

 

That and the ability to bulk add tags to notes, as in the OPs method of converting a notebook to a tag for posterity.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Nope. I don't think you are missing anything. Two different approaches. That's all. 

[jbenson2 2,147]

A tag is visible forever in the Left Panel and Ctrl Alt T.

A random code is only visible when needed, then fades back into archival obscurity.

[CalS 5,280]

 

A tag is visible forever in the Left Panel and Ctrl Alt T.

A random code is only visible when needed, then fades back into archival obscurity.

 

A good reason to limit the number of tags one uses, if one is a tagger.  Though if something is truly going into archival obscurity, as in never to be seen again, I might just delete it and eliminate the overhead.  Though I'm sure that when I make the decision to delete it will be suddenly be needed.  

[jbenson2 2,147]

I never delete a note from Evernote unless it is mistake.

Once it is in Evernote, it stays in Evernote.

 

Archival obscurity does not mean "never to be seen again".

Archival obscurity means it is archived. It can easily be retrieved.

[JohnDM 122]

There is a lot of different opinions on the best way to use Evernote -- which is what one would expect in an Open Flexible system.  There is, after all, lots of different kinds of people in the world-- which makes the world a wonderful place. What is right and works for me might not work for you. We all agree that whatever method you end up with, it is only going to work if you are consistent in your methodology. The problem is, your not going to know what is best for you until you have thousands of notes and you are actually trying to search for things to retrieve it. By then it's going to be hard to change -- not impossible -- just annoyingly inconvenient

 

So for me, when I was trying to discover what would be best for me, I sort of gravitated to the people that wanted to use evernote in the way I wanted to use it.

 

For me, my paper filing life was a nightmare. I live in a small house, I'm trying to run my own business, my wife was the executor of her uncles estate, my mother is in assisted living and trying to help her with medical papers -- put on top of all this that I am probably slightly ADD -- I got myself a perfect storm -- a Perfect Purfuse Purgatory of Perpetual Polluted Paper  .  . . Hell   . . . .(Okay, I couldn't think of another "P" word). I needed something to work and I needing it to work now or I was going to go insane. I looked in this forum and found some serious help and I jumped in with both feet into Evernote because I didn't really have a choice

 

So after 3 years of intense daily use -- now over 5,000 notes and definitely headed towards the tens of thousands of notes, I am invested big that Evernote is going to be around or I am in trouble -- each one of those notes with some serious info on it not just random web clippings. So this is what I found -- for me . . . .

 

Complex parent / child tag hierarchy -- works and works great -- probably works best, but it won't scale up.

 

Just like Notebooks work and Notebook Stacks probably work best .. . but they don't scale up. Not for retrieval -- not when your data base of notes is as wide as it is deep as mine is going to get.

 

Complex tag hierarchy is basically an alternative use to notebooks by another name -- The people that use this to great effect are new users and users who have a narrowly defined purpose for Evernote -- Primarily just using it for school and research, Primarily just using it to tract stock information and research etc etc Primarily using it to . . . . well  . . . .you get the idea. It doesn't mean its wrong. It is right for them but   . . ..   generally speaking . . . they have relatively small number of notes compared to the tens of thousands of the mega note users . . . . on average AND OR their big files might be big but are primarily one type of thing -- research, school, stocks tacking. Certainly there are exceptions but I am making generalizations of what ** I ** have noticed when I read in the forums.

 

The people I wanted to listen to were the people using it as a centralized data base of everything going on in their life with huge data files (yes there is concerns about privacy and security, you better have searched the forum for that -- more and more of my stuff is just local - non-synched but I am getting off my point) - If I was going to be able to reign in the madness of paper in my life coming at me in a thousand different directions I needed to find out how THEY were using it.

 

GrumpyMonkey is a great guy, helps a lot here, knows a lot, and I have learned a lot -- from him -- he is one of my heros-- and I hope he corrects me if  I am wrong, but I think I remember him saying he doesn't like a huge data base of notes (maybe he has changed his mind since he wrote that. We all change our MO slightly as the years go on. Old forum posts don't reflect that change in our thinking) and he uses it primarily (if I remember right) for his school classes and research.  Evernote -- for him -- is focused towards that -- And that is a legitimate  use -- that works for him. Narrow focus works for a lot of people. I hear what he is saying . . .and his point of view is legitimate and effective . . . for his use. I don't think it works for me.

 

"you say tomato, I say tomahto" we're all trying to get to the same place

[SahilC 13]

Thanks so much everyone!

What I've gotten out of this discussion so far is this:

 

For more complex groups of notes, I'd use some type of parent/child tag hierarchy as I am currently doing. 

For those one-off groups that I won't need for a long time, (for example, 5 pictures that need to be grouped together, each with the word "workout" in the image) I would append a string of text at the end.

In the future, if I ever need this group of pictures, I search for "workout" or whatever, until I find at least one of those images. Then I can take that string of text and search that, and I would find those 5 images.

 

Am I getting it right?

[jbenson2 2,147]

Thanks so much everyone!

What I've gotten out of this discussion so far is this:

 

For more complex groups of notes, I'd use some type of parent/child tag hierarchy as I am currently doing. 

For those one-off groups that I won't need for a long time, (for example, 5 pictures that need to be grouped together, each with the word "workout" in the image) I would append a string of text at the end.

In the future, if I ever need this group of pictures, I search for "workout" or whatever, until I find at least one of those images. Then I can take that string of text and search that, and I would find those 5 images.

 

Am I getting it right?

 

Yes.  

By the way, I create the random code by just hitting the keyboard 2 digits, 2 letters, and 2 digits

Then copy and paste into the other notes

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

GrumpyMonkey is a great guy, helps a lot here, knows a lot, and I have learned a lot -- from him -- he is one of my heros-- and I hope he corrects me if  I am wrong, but I think I remember him saying he doesn't like a huge data base of notes (maybe he has changed his mind since he wrote that. We all change our MO slightly as the years go on. Old forum posts don't reflect that change in our thinking) and he uses it primarily (if I remember right) for his school classes and research.  Evernote -- for him -- is focused towards that -- And that is a legitimate  use -- that works for him. Narrow focus works for a lot of people. I hear what he is saying . . .and his point of view is legitimate and effective . . . for his use. I don't think it works for me.

 

"you say tomato, I say tomahto" we're all trying to get to the same place

Great post. Thanks for all of the detail, and I hope your insights will help others as well. I've got a lot to say, but I am saving that for when I have a bit more time to sit down and write it all out. For the moment, I'll just suggest that people make sure to spend time familiarizing themselves with the search features in Evernote and (in the case of Mac users) on their devices. You may find that you simply don't need to bother organizing anything at all, because it is easily found, especially if you have information-rich titles. In fact, the more notes you have, the less organizing you'll want to do, because it becomes overwhelming, and there is very little return on your time investment.

[DutchPete 247]

 

Whichever marker you decide to use, tags, key words, or random character strings, they are basically honing devices, IMHO,  So 100,000 tags or markers of any sort doesn't make a lot of sense, particularly with an 100,000 note limit.  How many notes should be in a group to deserve a marker might be another question to stimulate some debate.

 

When honing, I don't see much difference in remembering a keyword or a tag, but random character strings seem to add a level of complexity, or at least another step or two (knowing I'm not going to be able to remember most things random).  In the Surface example above, I would mark them as PC.Stuff.  (The marker would be a tag in my case since I tend not to want to add things to a note that aren't native to the note, just me).  It would lump the notes in with other PC.Stuff for sure, but later when I might want to look back I've constrained the universe of results without taxing my memory too much.

 

The point of the random code, though is not to remember it! Don't tax your brain, just let it all go, and rely on Evernote search to sort it out. The fewer tags, the better, in my opinion. Now, if we had a more sophisticated way to wade through tags, I might be more amenable to the idea. But, "PC.Stuff" for something so ephemeral seems like unnecessary clutter to me. And, I wouldn't remember it! 

 

One option, though, might be to have these kind of throw-away tags appended with an "x-" or something at the beginning so that they don't make a mess of the interface, and they go at the bottom of the list outside of your regular tagging regime. 

 

 

The "x"-system what I use for temporary markers that I will not likely need for a long period of time.

[CalS 5,280]

Archival obscurity does not mean "never to be seen again".

Archival obscurity means it is archived. It can easily be retrieved.

Got it, haven't deleted too many notes myself..  It's just the word obscurity.  Begs the existential question based upon all the search methods in EN is anything ever obscure?  Rhetorically of course.

[CalS 5,280]

Thanks so much everyone!

What I've gotten out of this discussion so far is this:

 

For more complex groups of notes, I'd use some type of parent/child tag hierarchy as I am currently doing. 

For those one-off groups that I won't need for a long time, (for example, 5 pictures that need to be grouped together, each with the word "workout" in the image) I would append a string of text at the end.

In the future, if I ever need this group of pictures, I search for "workout" or whatever, until I find at least one of those images. Then I can take that string of text and search that, and I would find those 5 images.

 

Am I getting it right?

Sound like you are tracking to a good hybrid for yourself.  Work it and tweak it to satisfy your needs.  Would be interesting to hear how it goes for you.

 

One point I would like to clarify where I wasn't as specific as I might have been relative to parent/child tags.  I use the parent tags to organize tags to keep the aforementioned clutter under control.  I very rarely attach a parent tag to a note, seems redundant to me.  An example might help.

 

I have traveled a lot for work.  In order to get access to reservations, meeting materials, places to eat, places to see, notes I take, pictures I take, etc. about a trip I tag the appropriate notes with 20xx.mm.dd Name of Trip,   That tag is placed as a child in 20xx Meetings.  All the 20xx Meetings tags are children to the tag Meetings (which is the top level parent).  So more simply:  Meetings - 20xx Meetings - 20xx Name of Trip.    When searching for a trip if I remember the year I can start a tag search with 20xx and all the meetings for that year appear in the tag drop down, click the one I want.  The hierarchy is for when I can't remember the year.  Then to the left panel I go and scan.

 

Other parents are used to aggregate, a top level parent tag called accounts is a parent to all the bank, credit card, insurance, utility companies I have.  Not too complicated, I have 7 top level parent tags.  Hopefully I haven't confused with this, just wanted to be clear on the method I use.

[CalS 5,280]

In fact, the more notes you have, the less organizing you'll want to do, because it becomes overwhelming, and there is very little return on your time investment.

 

GM,

 

Respectfully, not sure I can agree with the unequivocal nature of this statement.  Not all use cases or thought processes are the same.

 

For me, quite the opposite is true. a surprise I am sure.  I have everything, including the kitchen sink (picture of the label when we replaced it), in Evernote.  I am as paperless as I can get in all aspects of my life.  Maybe its the way my mind works, but I need the structure of tags with the AND functionality to quickly find things.  That is my use case.  

 

Doesn't mean I'm going to state there is little return on investment if one doesn't use tags, it obviously works for you.  Net of it all, not sure how absolute one should be if the purpose of this thread is to share different ways of getting the job done to help others make their own informed decision.

[SahilC 13]

 

Thanks so much everyone!

What I've gotten out of this discussion so far is this:

 

For more complex groups of notes, I'd use some type of parent/child tag hierarchy as I am currently doing. 

For those one-off groups that I won't need for a long time, (for example, 5 pictures that need to be grouped together, each with the word "workout" in the image) I would append a string of text at the end.

In the future, if I ever need this group of pictures, I search for "workout" or whatever, until I find at least one of those images. Then I can take that string of text and search that, and I would find those 5 images.

 

Am I getting it right?

Sound like you are tracking to a good hybrid for yourself.  Work it and tweak it to satisfy your needs.  Would be interesting to hear how it goes for you.

 

One point I would like to clarify where I wasn't as specific as I might have been relative to parent/child tags.  I use the parent tags to organize tags to keep the aforementioned clutter under control.  I very rarely attach a parent tag to a note, seems redundant to me.  An example might help.

 

I have traveled a lot for work.  In order to get access to reservations, meeting materials, places to eat, places to see, notes I take, pictures I take, etc. about a trip I tag the appropriate notes with 20xx.mm.dd Name of Trip,   That tag is placed as a child in 20xx Meetings.  All the 20xx Meetings tags are children to the tag Meetings (which is the top level parent).  So more simply:  Meetings - 20xx Meetings - 20xx Name of Trip.    When searching for a trip if I remember the year I can start a tag search with 20xx and all the meetings for that year appear in the tag drop down, click the one I want.  The hierarchy is for when I can't remember the year.  Then to the left panel I go and scan.

 

Other parents are used to aggregate, a top level parent tag called accounts is a parent to all the bank, credit card, insurance, utility companies I have.  Not too complicated, I have 7 top level parent tags.  Hopefully I haven't confused with this, just wanted to be clear on the method I use.

 

 

Yes, that's exactly how I use Parent tags! Thanks!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

In fact, the more notes you have, the less organizing you'll want to do, because it becomes overwhelming, and there is very little return on your time investment.

GM,

 

Respectfully, not sure I can agree with the unequivocal nature of this statement.  Not all use cases or thought processes are the same.

 

For me, quite the opposite is true. a surprise I am sure.  I have everything, including the kitchen sink (picture of the label when we replaced it), in Evernote.  I am as paperless as I can get in all aspects of my life.  Maybe its the way my mind works, but I need the structure of tags with the AND functionality to quickly find things.  That is my use case.  

 

Doesn't mean I'm going to state there is little return on investment if one doesn't use tags, it obviously works for you.  Net of it all, not sure how absolute one should be if the purpose of this thread is to share different ways of getting the job done to help others make their own informed decision.

I think what I said makes sense. But, perhaps I was unclear. I didn't say there is little return on your investment in tags.

I said (to rephrase it) that lots of data means lots to organize, so the simpler your system is, the better it will work when you scale up from a handful of notes to tens of thousands. That seems like it would be more or less true for everyone, right? Someone might want to have lots of tags to be sure that everything is finely organized, and this works fine the first few days. However, as you go paperless and start generating hundreds or thousands of notes each month, making decisions about how to organize everything requires a lot of time and mental energy. If you are going to end up with many tens or hundreds of thousands of notes over the course of a few years, won't you be better off using broad categories like "personal" and "professional" rather than "grocery store receipts," "phone bills," "computer purchase research," etc.?

Or, to address the OP's question directly, can you imagine a scenario in which making use of the full range of tags (100,000) would be time well-spent? If not, then the answer to the original question would be that you should aim for the minimum amount of work necessary to get the job done. Over time, as I have become more adept at searching, and my own method of titling notes has been refined, I've found that I need neither tags nor notebooks. That's just me, though, but the point is that it is easily possible to manage large databases with minimal effort in organization. Whatever is "minimal" effort needed to manage your stuff sounds like a good plan to me, because (as I said), the more you have, the less time you'll want to spend organizing it.

[CalS 5,280]

I think what I said makes sense. But, perhaps I was unclear. I didn't say there is little return on your investment in tags.

I said (to rephrase it) that lots of data means lots to organize, so the simpler your system is, the better it will work when you scale up from a handful of notes to tens of thousands. That seems like it would be more or less true for everyone, right? Someone might want to have lots of tags to be sure that everything is finely organized, and this works fine the first few days. However, as you go paperless and start generating hundreds or thousands of notes each month, making decisions about how to organize everything requires a lot of time and mental energy. If you are going to end up with many tens or hundreds of thousands of notes over the course of a few years, won't you be better off using broad categories like "personal" and "professional" rather than "grocery store receipts," "phone bills," "computer purchase research," etc.?

Or, to address the OP's question directly, can you imagine a scenario in which making use of the full range of tags (100,000) would be time well-spent? If not, then the answer to the original question would be that you should aim for the minimum amount of work necessary to get the job done. Over time, as I have become more adept at searching, and my own method of titling notes has been refined, I've found that I need neither tags nor notebooks. That's just me, though, but the point is that it is easily possible to manage large databases with minimal effort in organization. Whatever is "minimal" effort needed to manage your stuff sounds like a good plan to me, because (as I said), the more you have, the less time you'll want to spend organizing it.

 

Thanks for taking the time to add the clarity.  After reading it I think we are in 100% agreement as to the problem and general solution.  We only differ in technique of how to use Evernote to get there while minimizing the effort to manage the process.   Apologies if I offended with the earlier post.

 

The key as you state is general categories.  The objective I set for myself was “How do I create broad tags such that preferably with a tag search, or next best a tag plus text search, I yield a set of 25 notes or less without having to remember much.” 

 

The not having to remember much meant tags for me.  Tags that I don’t necessarily need to remember because they just are what they are.  Some examples for clarity and specificity, which may be repetitive to other posts I've made but to get it in one place:

• I use a ScanSnap to scan all credit card receipts into EN, all get tagged with Receipt and F20xx leaving the  titles as the date time stamp that SS creates.  I can remember Receipt and find the last time I had Mexican food at Pablo's without too much brain damage.
• I download PDFs of all my statements whether bank, credit card, utility, brokerage, whatever.  I have a tag Statement and a tag for each company.  I can remember these since they are what they are.
• I download user manuals for anything I have and tag them Reference.
• Anything I want to relate to an individual I tag with # followed by their last name.
• Anything related to a project is tagged with . followed by the the project name (this is the area I may forget a tag).
• I use a modified TSW approach to task management and that set of tags is preceded by an !.

Based on the above types of general categories I can readily remember the majority of my tags since they are what they are.  Fortunately this represents the bulk of my tagging (the tag drop down as you add tags is your friend, when needed).  This process rounded out at about the 5,000 note mark.  If anything I have some detritus from the first 5,000 notes but I’m too lazy to clean it up.  I've added a few tags since then but very few relative to the additional 20,000 notes added.  The core of tags stay the same.  I guess I got lucky with scalability in my use case.

 

So, end of the day, rather than using search as the engine of choice, I prefer tags that are broad that don’t require much energy to use.  Same problem, two solutions.

[Wordsgood 526]

Just for the benefit of anyone reading this thread, I thought it might be helpful to post a link a related *pinned* forum thread about "The Benefits of Tagging." It's a long thread, but well worth a read if you are wanting to see more discussion about how other EN users deal with the pros and cons of using Tags:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/57740-the-benefit-of-using-tags/

[chirmer 567]

So, end of the day, rather than using search as the engine of choice, I prefer tags that are broad that don’t require much energy to use.  Same problem, two solutions.

 

I do an almost identical tagging structure to you, csihilling   I think the biggest detriment to tagging, and probably* the biggest reason people are hesitant to fully adopt tagging, is the fact that tags can get out of control very quickly. Just like any other method to managing large chunks of data, though, is the necessity to have a method to the madness, so to speak.

 

Jamie Rubin (Evernote's Paperless Ambassador) just posted a fantastic blog post about his journey to pruning his tagging methodology, and it's a goldmine of tips. → Going Paperless: How I Simplified My Tag Organization in Evernote (Part 2)

 

My favorite points he makes are that 1) it's crucial you have a tagging method (all capital or all lowercase? all singular or all plural? etc.), and 2) clearly define when to use a tag. He created a formula (that I've broadened a bit to cover more than just documents, like his example) that I think fits very well with a broad use of tags:

 

This is a ___________  ______________  for  _________________

          Category     Item Type            Entity/Person

 

So a car repair receipt might be tagged:

 

This is a ___money___  ___receipt____  for  ___car___________

          Category     Item Type            Entity/Person

 

Three simple tags that cover most of the bases. You might have a tag for each car you own, which you can put in the last slot, or use finance instead of money. The options are endless, but it's a great formula to get you started, as well as customizable to fit how your brain works. And, if you need to change it up down the road, you haven't got hundreds and hundreds of tags to fix.

 

*I have no scientific data whatsoever to back this up.

[CalS 5,280]

 

So, end of the day, rather than using search as the engine of choice, I prefer tags that are broad that don’t require much energy to use.  Same problem, two solutions.

 

I do an almost identical tagging structure to you, csihilling   I think the biggest detriment to tagging, and probably* the biggest reason people are hesitant to fully adopt tagging, is the fact that tags can get out of control very quickly. Just like any other method to managing large chunks of data, though, is the necessity to have a method to the madness, so to speak.

 

Jamie Rubin (Evernote's Paperless Ambassador) just posted a fantastic blog post about his journey to pruning his tagging methodology, and it's a goldmine of tips. → Going Paperless: How I Simplified My Tag Organization in Evernote (Part 2)

 

My favorite points he makes are that 1) it's crucial you have a tagging method (all capital or all lowercase? all singular or all plural? etc.), and 2) clearly define when to use a tag. He created a formula (that I've broadened a bit to cover more than just documents, like his example) that I think fits very well with a broad use of tags:

 

This is a ___________  ______________  for  _________________

          Category     Item Type            Entity/Person

 

So a car repair receipt might be tagged:

 

This is a ___money___  ___receipt____  for  ___car___________

          Category     Item Type            Entity/Person

 

Three simple tags that cover most of the bases. You might have a tag for each car you own, which you can put in the last slot, or use finance instead of money. The options are endless, but it's a great formula to get you started, as well as customizable to fit how your brain works. And, if you need to change it up down the road, you haven't got hundreds and hundreds of tags to fix.

 

*I have no scientific data whatsoever to back this up.

 

Good to know that great minds think alike!    

 

His concepts of a disciplined method to controlling your keywords are spot on.  Folks just need to find the method that works for them.  Relative to the his, personally I might have difficulty differentiating between category and item type.  Could just be just Car and Receipt for me so I could find it later.  But hey, that's how my mind works.