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Is it overkill to create tons of little notes for small annotations


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Up until now, I've been using Evernote for very simple note taking without harnessing many of it's features.

I create programming tutorials for a living, and the research process for a video is often very difficult because I make them very detailled and have to juggle a lot of information in my head. I am hoping to make this process a bit easier and less stressful by using Evernote more intelligently.

First of all, I've split up single notes into notebooks or even stacks, whereas before I had single text notes that were probably a mile long. I've also installed the web clipper.

A single video now has it's own dedicated note where I outline the video structure. I then use this note for reference while I'm recording (I've always been doing that). My problem is that I often have many little pieces of information from different websites (like a single answer in a forum, a part of a discussion, a sentence in an article etc) that went into the creation of this outline, but which I don't want to keep directly in this note (because this is not part of the actual video flow).

For example: In the video, I say "it's best practice to do XYZ". That's part of the actual video and a bullet point on my note. But in order to get to this conclusion, I read up many different articles and posts. I want to keep these little pieces of information connected to this bullet point on my note without distracting from the main parts.

In other words: I want to have some sort of "footnotes" or annotations.

What I do right now is, I use the web clipper to take a screenshot of an important piece of information, highlight the important bits and then save it as a single note. Then I copy the link of the note and create a sort of footnote with normal hyperlinks like this:

image.png.aaff158e5b696ffb0ef4ffa73c7d2a24.png

Sometimes those are web articles/screenshots, but sometimes those are just some sentences I wrote down. This means I have dedicated notes for single sentences or even words which are then connect to my main note. They are stored in their own notebook (one for all clips related to a video).

Here are 2 examples of such "annotation notes". One contains a screenshot of a Stackoverflow answer, the other one is just a single word that is supposed to help me remember what a bullet point on my outline was about.

image.thumb.png.f32c8690e33f0f470bee8e63021de949.png

This will of course create tons of tiny notes. Maybe 20 for a single video, maybe 100. I am aware of the 100k note limit, but that's fine since I can just delete old ones.

Are there any other problems with my approach? Is there a better way to achieve the same result?

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1 hour ago, flowa90 said:

First of all, I've split up single notes into notebooks or even stacks, whereas before I had single text notes that were probably a mile long.

I think short notes work better in Evernote; given the editor and format
My preference is to use the Tag feature instead of Stacks/Notebooks

>>In other words: I want to have some sort of "footnotes" or annotations
I'd go with footnotes (endnotes)
They're not automated in Evernote, but we can use manual entries at the bottom of the note

>>I have dedicated notes for single sentences which are then connect to my main note. They are stored in their own notebook.

I use note links often, but I'm not clear why the "single sentence" has to be a separate note

>>will just distract me when I'm recording

Relocating the sentence to the bottom of the note (footnote/endnote) works for me

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Thank you for your answer!

8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I use note links often, but I'm not clear why the "single sentence" has to be a separate note

Because they don't belong to the outline of the video and will just distract me when I'm recording. Those are meta information that are supposed to help me remember why I wrote down that particular bullet point. Of course a single word could just be put directly into the main note, but whole sentences would bloat it up too much.

I could of course also put these footnotes into the same note, but I can navigate them more easily as links because I can just quickly Shift + Click them, take a quick look and then close the window. Whereas with lots of footnotes in the same file I'd probably have to search quite a lot. Also, this keeps up consistency with the clipped notes.

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Is it overkill to create tons of little notes for small annotations

No, unless they interfere with your workflow.

38 minutes ago, flowa90 said:

A single video now has it's own dedicated note where I outline the video structure. I then use this note for reference while I'm recording (I've always been doing that).

If your workflow is to create dedicated notes for each video that you make, and you need to use that note for reference during recording, and if the notes used to create that note aren't important to the recording process, then you should just focus on making that note and keep distracting information out of the way. If the subsidiary notes are important, then use note links to make references from your video note text to relevant subsidiary notes. But the essence is to only include text that's relevant to making the video in your video note.

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I'm kinda with the group here - the main theme of many posts here is "if it works for you..."  I don't see any technical reason why it shouldn't be viable,  and if you try it out on a couple of videos you'll quickly find out if you want to continue doing it.  Go for it and see what happens!

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45 minutes ago, flowa90 said:

Btw, can you recommend any "must-read" articles that teach me how to get the most out of Evernote? 

Probably best to do an internet search for Evernote + your area(s) of interest.  There's a LOT of 'help' information out there,  though IMHO it tends to jump from the blindingly obvious (how to create a note) to the deeply technical (completely automate your GTD process).  Best (again, IMHO) to wait 'till you get stuck on something,  and look for specific help.  Questions generally welcomed here too.  If you're into video,  have a look through Steve Dotto's library on Youtube - 

He's done hours of content on this and many other productivity themes!

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