Productivity and General Questions / GTD

[AlanNotes 7]

Hello, 

I was just looking to get some feedback from anyone who uses GTD and Evernote together, along with answering some general power user usability questions. I currently have it set up with notebooks and then create new notes for next actions and individual items. I'm curious if something like this really scales and also what everyone else has for actual amount of notes in their notebooks? 

For example: How many notes before it becomes really hard to use a notebook? I have 65 in my largest and 370 overall. I seems like it's already getting hard to use with this scale. 

 

My General questions: 

For the really heavy Evernote users how to reach anywhere near 10GB for premium? I use my Evernote everyday, but don't get anywhere close to 1GB. 

Does anyone know of a notebook mark to put notebooks at the bottom that isn't the letter Z? Most special characters bring the notebook to the top, I just want a couple low priority ones to be at the bottom. 

Is there a way to search by note title? The search function seems to only search by note text? 

Is there a way to sort by most used note as well? 

For scaling up in large Evernote uses do you find yourself using very large notes or several notes? Tags or several notebooks? 

 

I'll most likely make a different post for critiques on how I'm trying to implement GTD with Evernote, I believe this would be the right forum. Thanks in advance if you can answer any of these questions. 

[CalS 5,280]

Never get close to 1GB a month myself, current DB is 14GB.

Z is it for sorting to the bottom AFAIK.

intitle:"what you are searching"

Sort by most used is not available.

Many small notes seems to work better than few big notes for most.

You can search the forum for GTD or TSW or task management and find quite a few threads detailing different use cases.  Not to mention do a search on tags vs notebooks to see all the different perspectives on many/few notebooks and many/few tags and how to combine the two.  No particular right ways, it ends up being what works best for you.

[DTLow 5,736]

On March 4, 2016 at 5:56 AM, Alan Herriman said:

I was just looking to get some feedback from anyone who uses GTD and Evernote together, along with answering some general power user usability questions.. 

My workflow has been greatly influenced by GTD
and the TSW (The Secret Weapon) web site which discusses applying GTD to Evernote.

>> How many notes before it becomes really hard to use a notebook? I have 65 in my largest and 370 overall. I seems like it's already getting hard to use with this scale. 

I only use a single notebook with 6500 note - no issues yet.  You shouldn't be having system problems
As to use problems - the notes are there if I need them, but I'm probably only using less than 10 on a regular basis.

>>For the really heavy Evernote users how to reach anywhere near 10GB for premium? I use my Evernote everyday, but don't get anywhere close to 1GB. 

Thats the upload limit, per month.  The only way I can see exceeding that if I have to reinstall my data base a few times.

>>Does anyone know of a notebook mark to put notebooks at the bottom that isn't the letter Z? Most special characters bring the notebook to the top, I just want a couple low priority ones to be at the bottom. 

I usually use zz. prefix to make it distinct from the title 
 

>>Is there a way to search by note title? The search function seems to only search by note text? 

Check out the Evernote Search Grammar  You can use search intitle:xxxxxx

>>For scaling up in large Evernote uses do you find yourself using very large notes or several notes? Tags or several notebooks? 

- Small notes work better for me
  I have master notes, with links to the subnotes.
- I'm a tag person
  For some people, tags and notebooks are interchangeable
  however each has special characteristics 
     - example, you can have more than one tag per note
     - example, notebooks can be shared or local

>>create new notes for next actions and individual items

I've never got too hung up on the Next Action label.
All items go into my Inbox notebook, and then I process them and flag the ones that are !Actionable.  
- This includes all tasks - even if they're not next action.
- For priority/scheduling, I apply When (Now, Soon, Later, Scheduled, Waiting) tags
  Now/Soon correspond to the GTD Next Action concept

 

 

[gazumped 11,666]

There's lots on GTD systems in the forums - best search around for much more detail.  I'm now approaching 22,000 notes on a desktop with no major slowdowns,  although mileage tends to vary on that.  Best advice on GTD generally - start simple and add detail when and if necessary...

[AlanNotes 7]

Thanks everyone, really appreciate the feedback! 

[CalS 5,280]

Your are welcome.

[DTLow 5,736]

On March 4, 2016 at 5:56 AM, Alan Herriman said:

Does anyone know of a notebook mark to put notebooks at the bottom that isn't the letter Z? Most special characters bring the notebook to the top, I just want a couple low priority ones to be at the bottom. 

>> Sort Sequence

Short version: You can use the Greek letter Omega ( Ω )

Long version: From the Book of Revelation, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”

 

More options are presented here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8086375/what-character-to-use-to-put-an-item-at-the-end-of-an-alphabetic-list#comment54169021_29556336

[chirmer 567]

To piggyback off DTLow, Alpha ( α ) works, too. Perhaps all Greek letters work?