Evernote reminders

[WayneHarris 0]

Hi all,

 

I'm considering using Evernote to manage my business and personal tasks.

 

Since most of my tasks are time sensitive, so need to be carried out on a specific date, it makes sense to use the Reminders.

 

My problem is that whilst the reminders show at the top of the panel... they ALL show. I may have 100 reminders set in due course, but I don't want them all to show. I just want those that are due NOW, or are OVERDUE.

 

Is it possible to set Evernote to show the reminders in this way?

 

Many thanks,

 

Wayne

[Frank.dg 1,385]

You can sort Reminders by date in the sorting options... that should give you a chronological list of Reminders and their dates.

 

Also, you may want to link your Evernote account to a brilliant service called Sunrise Calendar, which is, BTW, endorsed by Evernote... it will plot your date/ time specific reminders on the Sunrise Calendar... also allowing you to integrate your iOS reminders, iOS/ Google calendar, etc., Trello, Asana... the list goes on. It's a good place to consolidate and visualize your date-sensitive tasks/ scheduled commitments. 

 

You'll find them on iOS, Android and Web. 

 

Also, remember that you can create tag/ notebook contexts for your notes... and when you filter as such, you will get a more focused set of reminders in the Reminders List.

 

I've written a series on task management in Evernote, Kanban style... however, depending on the nature of your business, these approaches may not be the best for collaboration and/ or complex workflows. These posts are more oriented towards personal task management:

 

http://www.productivitymashup.com/blog/2014/10/7/kanban-calendar-evernote-series-1-of-5 

[WayneHarris 0]

Thank you.

 

[Rocket J. Squirrel 43]

Frank.dg has a number of good tips there; I shall try them out.  But I also think Evernote's method of presenting reminders isn't very good.  Once my list of reminders became so huge I stopped using them all together because everything I wanted to get to the top of my list of notes I'd have to scroll to the top and then scroll back down from the top through all the reminders to find my notes again.  Yes, there are workarounds to all this, and Frank has identified some of them, but I think at the core design level Evernote leaves a lot of room for improvement.

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Once my list of reminders became so huge I stopped using them all together because everything I wanted to get to the top of my list of notes I'd have to scroll to the top and then scroll back down from the top through all the reminders to find my notes again. 

 

It's like saying, "My list of notes got so long that I stopped using Evernote". Just as your notes take on the contexts you create for them, the Reminders List is an extension of whatever context you're filtering for.

 

Task management via the Reminders List in Evernote will inevitably require a well-rounded knowledge of contexts and filtering in Evernote to be truly effective. For sure, if you're going to put all of your reminders in one notebook and/ or view your Reminders List for "All Notes", it's going to be quite a PITA to make sense of one, long, flat list. 

 

If you keep in mind that you can drag notes between notebooks within the Reminders List (on Windows) and to notebooks within stacks/ hierarchical tag contexts within your Left Panel on both Mac and Windows, you're moving into a more 3-dimensional approach visually. Then you can also tap into sub lists visually if within a Reminder-based setup, one also uses checkboxes within a note itself... or even note links intra-note to simulate yet another incarnation of Kanban principles. My posts explore those possibilities in-depth.

[Rocket J. Squirrel 43]

 

Once my list of reminders became so huge I stopped using them all together because everything I wanted to get to the top of my list of notes I'd have to scroll to the top and then scroll back down from the top through all the reminders to find my notes again. 

 

It's like saying, "My list of notes got so long that I stopped using Evernote". Just as your notes take on the contexts you create for them, the Reminders List is an extension of whatever context you're filtering for.

 

Frank,

 

First, I did not know about some of the features you mentioned.  So again, thank you.  I may try them out. 

 

But your first sentence isn't as silly as you mean it to sound!  At least not to me because it's the impetus behind an Evernote app I will be releasing soon.  My job and my life is non-stop reading.  And I save everything I want to remember into Evernote.  But now my stack of stuff is over 6,000 notes high and despite extensive use of tags and notebooks, there is very little difference for me between saving something into Evernote and not saving it at all.  

 

What I mean by that is, if a note isn't connected to a specific time & date (e.g. receipts for April 15), or a specific project (e.g. blog posts for my website), then there is little chance I'm ever going to see it again.  It just gets lost in the stack (I call it "disappearing into the ether").  And those non-specific notes are probably 90% of my Evernote stuff.  It includes lines from novels, excerpts from a philosophy paper, a political argument, etc.  It's just stuff that matters to me and I want to have it.  But I don't really "have  it" once I forget it exists because I have no way of looking up things I don't even know exist.  And I don't think I'm alone here.  I've talked to many Evernote users who complain they do a lot of saving but rarely see the stuff they save.  

 

Well believe it or not, I've solved this problem!  It has taken a ridiculous amount of time and money but it should be ready for beta in a few weeks.

 

Now I apologize for taking this discussion off topic, but this discussion has given me an idea for how I can incorporate reminders into my app.  I won't be able to do it in the first release, but it's on my list for V2.

 

P.S. What is 42?

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Hey @Rocket,

 

First off, my apologies if that comment came across as overly critical. It's becoming clearer that you have a very specific use case/ need that you're wanting to squeeze out of our beloved beast of burden. I've followed the thread on getting highlighted book summaries into Evernote with interest... as well as clipped your blog posts to my account. 

 

A tad off topic... before I forget, there's an interesting thread on Spaced Repetition learning here in the forums that might be of interest to you, depending on how much you need to remember vs. how much you want Evernote to Remember 

 

Is it too early to let the cat out of the bag with more specifics on the app you're developing? If so, I guess we'll all have to wait to hear back from you  . Android, iOS, Web, Desktop?

 

...But I don't really "have  it" once I forget it exists because I have no way of looking up things I don't even know exist.  And I don't think I'm alone here.  I've talked to many Evernote users who complain they do a lot of saving but rarely see the stuff they save.  

 

That kind of reminds me of Evernote's "Context" feature (Premium), in tandem with the Web clipper's "Related Results" utility. In recent months, Evernote has shifted the focus of their vision and made a push towards surfacing one's content through augmented intelligence. If you've got it activated... I was wondering what you personally make of the Context feature and the way it shows you related content from among your own notes. It seems to work pretty well for me, surfacing content and making connections I may not need, but find to be very relevant... whether you're composing a note or viewing a note. Does that help you to get at more of what you "don't even know exist"?

 

Of further interest to me, has been the Web clipper's "Related Results", which used to be called "Google Simultaneous Search" or something to that effect. It shows me related content in my account alongside my Google search results. Another feature to consider in the mix is the related notes (from your account) you see in the Web clipper's clipping dialogue box once you've just clipped anything to your account. I find the it interesting on occasion. Not to forget related results of notes in your account at the foot of the interface when you're reading/ highlighting stuff in the Clearly extension. I think the 4 features mentioned above might have been made just for those users with similar needs to yours. Along those lines, I wrote a blog post some time back, entitled, "Chuck versus the Evernote", which highlights and illustrates the features mentioned above.

 

42... SPOILER ALERT!!...is somewhat of an internet meme and a significant reference among self-professed geeks. It is impossible to separate it from mostly subtle references in innumerous forms of entertainment media. It was even included as the "mega number" of Hurley's winning lottery ticket number (Lost), subsequently becoming the mysterious/ cursed number recurring throughout the series. Specifically, it is the answer to, "Life, the Universe and Everything", from Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy" series. My (temporary) selection of this icon for the Evernote forum was just as whimsical as Douglas Adams' totally random choice thereof.  

 

 

 

 

[CalS 5,280]

Hi all,

 

I'm considering using Evernote to manage my business and personal tasks.

 

Since most of my tasks are time sensitive, so need to be carried out on a specific date, it makes sense to use the Reminders.

 

My problem is that whilst the reminders show at the top of the panel... they ALL show. I may have 100 reminders set in due course, but I don't want them all to show. I just want those that are due NOW, or are OVERDUE.

 

Is it possible to set Evernote to show the reminders in this way?

 

Many thanks,

 

Wayne

You can set up saved searches for Today, Late, or whatever using the search grammar provided by EN.  Personally I use hot keys I created using PhaseExpress.  So Win-Alt-T displays all reminders due today, in whatever context I am in.  FWIW.

[Frank.dg 1,385]

You can set up saved searches for Today, Late, or whatever using the search grammar provided by EN.  Personally I use hot keys I created using PhaseExpress.  So Win-Alt-T displays all reminders due today, in whatever context I am in.  FWIW.

 

FWIW??!!... That's a powerhouse tip Cal 

 

You know, I only caught on to what you explained before when I actually installed PhraseExpress. 

 

Now to ruminate on that line of thought and see what I can squeeze out of it...

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I'm considering using Evernote to manage my business and personal tasks.

 

IMO, Evernote is a very weak tool to use for project and task management -- it lacks most of the features that most task managers provide.

 

For your business, you may want to consider something like Apptivo.com.

It does an excellent job of project and task management, but also provides many more features (which it calls "Apps") to manage your business.

[Rocket J. Squirrel 43]

]Hi @Frank,

 

 

 

Hey @Rocket,

 

First off, my apologies if that comment came across as overly critical. It's becoming clearer that you have a very specific use case/ need that you're wanting to squeeze out of our beloved beast of burden. I've followed the thread on getting highlighted book summaries into Evernote with interest... as well as clipped your blog posts to my account. 

 

A tad off topic... before I forget, there's an interesting thread on Spaced Repetition learning here in the forums that might be of interest to you, depending on how much you need to remember vs. how much you want Evernote to Remember 

 

Is it too early to let the cat out of the bag with more specifics on the app you're developing? If so, I guess we'll all have to wait to hear back from you  . Android, iOS, Web, Desktop?

 

...But I don't really "have  it" once I forget it exists because I have no way of looking up things I don't even know exist.  And I don't think I'm alone here.  I've talked to many Evernote users who complain they do a lot of saving but rarely see the stuff they save.  

 

That kind of reminds me of Evernote's "Context" feature (Premium), in tandem with the Web clipper's "Related Results" utility. In recent months, Evernote has shifted the focus of their vision and made a push towards surfacing one's content through augmented intelligence. If you've got it activated... I was wondering what you personally make of the Context feature and the way it shows you related content from among your own notes. It seems to work pretty well for me, surfacing content and making connections I may not need, but find to be very relevant... whether you're composing a note or viewing a note. Does that help you to get at more of what you "don't even know exist"?

 

Of further interest to me, has been the Web clipper's "Related Results", which used to be called "Google Simultaneous Search" or something to that effect. It shows me related content in my account alongside my Google search results. Another feature to consider in the mix is the related notes (from your account) you see in the Web clipper's clipping dialogue box once you've just clipped anything to your account. I find the it interesting on occasion. Not to forget related results of notes in your account at the foot of the interface when you're reading/ highlighting stuff in the Clearly extension. I think the 4 features mentioned above might have been made just for those users with similar needs to yours. Along those lines, I wrote a blog post some time back, entitled, "Chuck versus the Evernote", which highlights and illustrates the features mentioned above.

 

42... SPOILER ALERT!!...is somewhat of an internet meme and a significant reference among self-professed geeks. It is impossible to separate it from mostly subtle references in innumerous forms of entertainment media. It was even included as the "mega number" of Hurley's winning lottery ticket number (Lost), subsequently becoming the mysterious/ cursed number recurring throughout the series. Specifically, it is the answer to, "Life, the Universe and Everything", from Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy" series. My (temporary) selection of this icon for the Evernote forum was just as whimsical as Douglas Adams' totally random choice thereof.  

 

 

 

 

 

I was at EC3 where Context was first introduced by ContextBooster.  ContextBooster was the app that EN eventually made into the current Context.  It uses a type of latent semantic indexing to suggest mostly notes you haven't read, but also notes within your own database.  When it suggests articles you haven't read, it's acting more or less like a Google search, except it has a lot more info to go off of in conducting that search (i.e. the content of the entire note you are looking at).  Personally, I rarely use it.  I'm more interested in it pointing me to my own notes, but I haven't seen it pull out anything meaningful to me yet.

 

Context is kind of the opposite of what I'm trying to do with Crusoe.  What I'm shooting for is perfect recall.  Recall works on connections you make in an instant in your mind.  You don't do a search in your brain and then start working through the search list.  You don't categorize the stuff you know with tags.  What happens is you see or read something and you think "cool!"  But why do you think something's cool while I don't think it's cool?  It's because you have had different experiences and you make different connections than I do.  Crusoe lets you save those connections, and then you can navigate through your notes using those connections.  I have attached a screenshot of what that navigation looks like in Crusoe:

 

 

Like you, I find "Related Results" interesting on occasion (I use Web Clipper every day).  By "on occasion" I mean about once a month.  It's just not that useful to me personally.  But the Crusoe links are everything to me.  There's no magical algorithm at work in Crusoe suggesting notes to me.  It just shows me what I was thinking  at a particular point in time.  And that, to me, is HUGE.  I've been using it for a while now and I think it's fantastic.  Now I just have figure out how to convince others of the same.

 

 

 

As for 42...here I thought you were a Jackie Robinson fan!