Hello everyone!
Finally, I took some time to write this down - been thinking about this for over two years; the time that has passed since I began my PhD - or, 600 notes after.
Evernote has been my notetaking and file keeping app for six years now. I began to use it more heavily during my master's, but, now with the PhD demands are higher.
With this post, I am aiming to share how I use it has a PhD student and share my overall experience with Evernote.
So, for other PhD students out there here is how I use my Evernote - we few examples:
folders are structured like trees:
PhD
PhD- meetings
PhD- literature review
PhD- lab notes
(...)
In the same fashion are the tags
PhD
PhD: meetings
PhD:meetings: with supervisor
PhD: experiments
PhD: experiments: experiment 1
(...)
Here are the things I miss that would improve my experience:
web clips that can be appended to a note
for example, when I am doing a literature review would be nice to have all link for the papers in the same note; ordered as I am going through the search
better calendar integration with Outlook and/or Gmail
having all the tasks and events in the same calendar (both in the smartphone and desktop; not just in the smartphone)
Scannable for Android
smoother image editing (e.g. cropping)
sometimes its a bit frustrating the time spent to crop a picture
OneDrive integration (similar to Google Drive)
would be great to add files without having to create sharing links all the time
more highlight colours (at least two more)
because it's just useful to have different colours for different concepts
bigger files per note
for example, I can't save all data from one experiment in the same note
And here are the things I love (and can't live without them):
file search
OCR in photos
saved searches
coloured tag
great for glancing what is done or not
Gmail and Outlook clipper
Internal links
this is great to index drafts, pictures and experiment results from one note only
custom templates
import folders to a notebook (don't use this often now)
use this to import '.pdf' of papers into Evernote, where I then write notes and share it with my peers
publish the notes with a link
great to share protocols and guides for new students
If I am missing something that is already implemented, sorry - and let me know.
happy notetaking,
Leonardo