Jump to content

TechBarber

Level 3
  • Posts

    271
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

TechBarber last won the day on March 24 2013

TechBarber had the most liked content!

2 Followers

About TechBarber

Recent Profile Visitors

12,941 profile views

TechBarber's Achievements

100

Reputation

  1. The legacy Windows client always gave me the ability to drag notes to tags. So whenever I would sit down to file the notes in my Inbox away, I could just drag them to the appropriate tag in the panel on the left-hand side. For some crazy reason, this was not the case on Mac -- you have to either magically know the tag you want and type it in each time, or go to an entire "tag organizing" screen to add new tags. In the new clients, the only remaining wrench in my workflow, is the ability to right click the side panel on the left and being able to create new tags, and then being able to DRAG notes into the tags. Making it even more odd -- you can drag notes to the left panel for shortcuts or to change notebooks, but not to apply a tag.
  2. I suppose it does provide a hard line of separation between the "work" and "personal". Also, OneNote is meh in my opinion - I have my gripes. But for work it may be the option.
  3. I may ramble here for a second, but it's to provide context. Trust me, I'll have a point at the end of all this. I think... I've been a fan of the productivity space for years. I truly believe that many "apps" have made me more productive. Evernote for notes, Todoist for tasks, OneNote for files -- that happens to be where I'm at now, but you name it - I've used it. I also watch a lot of 'Productivity Gurus' on YouTube, always looking for new tips and ways to become efficient. But I've realized something lately. Some of these people - okay, a lot of those people - overcomplicate things beyond belief. One minute Evernote is the best thing ever, the next minute it's Notion, then it's ROAM. It's a constant churn. The really bad ones use all of them, some of them even detail in their videos how they decide which app to use for a certain task (YouTube scripts - Notion, long term notes - Evernote, Research - ROAM). It just strikes me as being way more complicated than it needs to be. With that in mind I set out to simplify my own digital life. I currently use Evernote for notes (work and personal), Notion for some life management (goals, movies I want to see), Todoist for tasks and OneDrive for files since I have a 365 subscription. I try to avoid anything Google if I can, but that's a personal thing, and my universe is all Apple with the exception of my work PC. A few things have occurred to me lately that I'm mulling over. The role of Evernote as file storage. Cloud services like OneNote are great for storing files like .pdf and .doc, but when you need to house different media types within a single organized area it's not the best. For example, lets say I buy a lawnmower today. It makes far more sense to me to scan the receipt with Scannable, download the manual in .pdf format, scan the salesman's business card, and pack it all into one Evernote note. It's easily searchable, I can use tags, and it's visual. Seems better than each item being spread around four folders deep in OneDrive somewhere. It's the same deal when my car goes in for maintenance. When they hand me the invoice showing what work was done -- to me that's a quick scan and into Evernote. Yes, you can do the same with OneDrive, but I find it easier to find notes than files, if that makes any sense. So the question then becomes, why use OneDrive for files? It makes sense for movies and some other media, but scans, pdfs, docs, xlxs files -- why not just EN? I use Evernote for both work and personal notes, but given the nature of my job and dealing with sensitive information, I only post high-level data into Evernote (meeting notes, reference documents). Anything client specific I keep out of EN, granted most of what I need to save isn't client specific. However, given that my company is already on Office 365 and they have a secure place for me to store all my data, I wonder if OneNote isn't just a better option for security and for "playing nice" at work. I have Evernote installed on my work PC and while there's nothing of any consequence in it in terms of getting me in trouble, I'm not sure IT would love the idea. Maybe just being assimilated into the OneNote world - at least for work - would be safer? If I did switch to OneNote at work, then I'm becoming what I'm most trying to avoid - the guy who overcomplicates everything as I'd now have OneNote for Work and EN for Personal, and still be caught between a work OneDrive and a personal OneDrive. I guess what all this is getting at is, I try to downsize the apps I use as much as possible, but in doing so I sometimes lose a function or ability to do something that helps me stay organized. If I start using more apps to handle different scenarios and features, then it becomes "well darn, where did I save that document last week - it could be in any of 4 places". I find that simplifying is great, but in doing so you lose a lot of tools from your tool belt. Conversely, having a million tools in your belt just weighs you down and makes it difficult to find anything. I need a structured system in place I guess -- that's the main issue. Every time I am sent a file or a document my first thought is - oh god, so, where does this go?
  4. I've been an EN member since 2010, and a premium subscriber for at least 90% of that time. I recently imported everything into OneNote as I've used both OneNote and EN for quite some time, and I can't justify the $89 CAD for the premium subscription. Sorry, but PDF annotation isn't worth quite that much to me. Anyway... One thing I find funny - and I'm guilty of it too at times - is how we let our biases play into things. For example, the stories above about how EN is worth it because it held receipts and let you look up old purchases. You can do that in OneNote just as easily, and OneNote is free. You could also save the receipt on Dropbox or Google Drive, or even file it in a folder in your desk. It's not like EN is the only way to do this. I've also seen a lot of comments bashing OneNote where I just think to myself "actually yes it CAN do that", "actually that's not true" and "well, you can, just differently". It works both ways though too, to be fair - there are lots of comments on here in favor of OneNote that don't take all the EN features into account. I know it's impossible to remove biases but if we could pair it down a bit on both sides the discussion would be far more fruitful and factual.
×
×
  • Create New...