Setting up tags so you can browse notes?

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I'm new to Evernote and I understand that EN is great for collecting and retrieving notes. It seems like it can also be great for browsing notes if the user sets things up properly.

 

In this video (starting at 1:15), the user describes a tagging system that allows him to browse his notes (as opposed to executing a search). Is this the preferred method of setting up a tag hierarchy that permits efficient notes browsing? Are there other setups that people prefer?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tubLiL1CJz8

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I'm new to Evernote and I understand that EN is great for collecting and retrieving notes. It seems like it can also be great for browsing notes if the user sets things up properly.

 

In this video (starting at 1:15), the user describes a tagging system that allows him to browse his notes (as opposed to executing a search). Is this the preferred method of setting up a tag hierarchy that permits efficient notes browsing? Are there other setups that people prefer?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tubLiL1CJz8

I skipped to 1:15 & watched for a couple of minutes. But I found this video confusing b/c the person kept switching between "generic" terminology & Evernote terminology & most often used non-Evernote terminology. IE, there are no FILING CABINETS, FOLDERS or SUB FOLDERS in Evernote. (There are STACKS & NOTEBOOKS.) But I think I get the gist of what he was trying to convey. Additionally, pretty much every time you want to retrieve info from Evernote, it requires a "search". But searches can be based upon a variety and a combination of meta data. IOW, if I have 62 notes tagged with "kidney diet", I can quickly find those 62 notes (out of thousands) by selecting all notes & the tag "kidney diet".

With Evernote's stacks, notebooks, tags, descriptive titles & keywords, it's pretty easy to find what you need out of thousands of notes & utilizing EN's search engine.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Additionally, in that few moments, I felt he was overtagging.  Or at least creating waaaaay too many tags.  (IE the phone bills - his/hers, land/cell). IMO, using descriptive titles & keywords work much better.  In my case, I have all bills in a Bills notebook.  My cable bill is added with a title of Cox YYYYDDMM where YYYYMMDD is the date of the bill or the closing date (in the case of a credit card or bank statement).  If I need to pull up my cable bill from May of 2006, I simply go to all notes, do the following search & the results pane will contain the ONE note I'm looking for, out of 62,000+ notes.  And guess what...it doesn't even have a single tag. 

 

intitle:Cox 200605*

 

If I wanted to get all bills for cable for 2007, I do this search:

 

intitle:Cox 2007*

 

Again, not a single tag in play.

[megsaint 441]

Also, there is no one best way to use Evernote. I use more notebooks than some people here, for example. I also think arranging tags in hierarchies is a waste of time and I've never found any reason to use stacks. My advice would be to not get too caught up in searching for the "best" way to use Evernote. Take note of other people's methods and adopt whatever bits and pieces make sense to you as you go along.

Best of luck.