Clean up your Evernote

[DutchPete 247]

Some of you just might be interested in this, I know a lot of the so-called power users are not & would happily bite my head off if they could for bringing up this subject again.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/clean-evernote-clutter-cleaner-note-taking/

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Sandy gives some down-to-earth cleanup advice:

"Start by reviewing those notebooks by opening those that look the most outdated first. For example, if you have a notebook named “Wedding” and you have been divorced for three years, chances are you no longer need that book."

I do notice that she has a "Renovations" stack with a separate notebook for each room in the house. I'm thinking... Tags. Anyways, it's a matter of preference. But she gives some of the nitty gritty of cleaning house.

[gazumped 11,652]

If cleaning house floats your boat,  then I for one will defend to the death...  well to the mildly inconvenienced... your right to spend time making things look clean.  I don't do that as a stand-alone exercise,  it's just part of the regular maintenance of my database.  If I see stuff that's out of date,  I'll kill it or archive it.  If I don't,  it stays in the heap.  IMHO you can spend a lot of time making things look nice when you could be either 1) enjoying life or 2) working on stuff that actually matters.  Both of those have higher priorities for me than tidy.  Just sayin..

[Frank.dg 1,385]

If cleaning house floats your boat,  then I for one will defend to the death...  well to the mildly inconvenienced... your right to spend time making things look clean.  I don't do that as a stand-alone exercise,  it's just part of the regular maintenance of my database.  If I see stuff that's out of date,  I'll kill it or archive it.  If I don't,  it stays in the heap.  IMHO you can spend a lot of time making things look nice when you could be either 1) enjoying life or 2) working on stuff that actually matters.  Both of those have higher priorities for me than tidy.  Just sayin..

 

... or 3) romping the Evernote forum 

[DutchPete 247]

If cleaning house floats your boat,  then I for one will defend to the death...  well to the mildly inconvenienced... your right to spend time making things look clean.  I don't do that as a stand-alone exercise,  it's just part of the regular maintenance of my database.  If I see stuff that's out of date,  I'll kill it or archive it.  If I don't,  it stays in the heap.  IMHO you can spend a lot of time making things look nice when you could be either 1) enjoying life or 2) working on stuff that actually matters.  Both of those have higher priorities for me than tidy.  Just sayin..

 

That's a way of looking at it, and as long as it works for you that's good. But your productivity is bound to go down with time with the increase in clutter, unless productivity is not relevant to your workflow.

[gazumped 11,652]

I don't think my productivity is affected - don't know how much time I'd spend on a single cleanup,  but I probably spend a similar amount of time in multiple quick tag / retitle / deletes as I'm working.  No huge net gain or loss, just a different way of working.  Admittedly if I don't see notes they don't get culled,  but then they're not affecting anything and it really would be a waste of time to consider whether they're worth keeping - and run the risk I'd get it wrong where it might matter.  I do move things around and archive closed projects,  and probably when I get another 5 years into this I'll look with suspicion at anything over 10 years old;  but unless I jinxed myself by saying this - as long as things keep working I don't plan on fixing anything anytime soon...   

[CalS 5,280]

I'm with Gaz on this one.  As long as I can find what I need in less than 15 seconds, I don't much mind what else is in the primordial soup of my notes. 

 

Now, like Gaz, sometimes I will get a search result set with something of no value and I delete it then.  Typically these notes were a part of great scheme I had that just didn't work out (saving emails of notices of statements being an example I am embarrassed to admit, but hey, you can't get it right all the time).