7 Ways to Use Evernote
Last week, Lifehack founder Leon Ho introduced me to the beta note taking application Evernote. Evernote boasts a variety of features that make it an excellent application, including automatic synchronization between the web and your other devices, tagging and sorting features, an online client that makes it accessible from anywhere, and a search feature that can even search text stored within images.
From the developers themselves:
Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at anytime, from anywhere.
I’m a big fan of anything that keeps my data synchronized between devices, let alone totally automatically, so I was keen to give Evernote a try. It has grown on me in a short amount of time. It’s great for keeping snippets of information, replacing stickies and taking down notes, and pasting research from the web into.
It’s got a pretty unique set of features and fills a gap in my workflow I’d been looking to fill in terms of applications, so today we’ll look at seven ways to use Evernote to make life easier.
For the record, I’m not affiliated with Evernote in any way, and I haven’t had any communication with the developers before - it’s just an insanely useful application that anyone interested in productivity can benefit from.
1. The office cleaner: usually, by the end of the day when I zero out my email inbox and desktop, I’ve built up a collection of text files that I used to take down spur-of-the-moment notes. If the phone rings, I open a new text file as I answer it; if I have an idea while I’m working on something, it goes straight in a text file. It’s just more clutter that’s hard to find a suitable place for at the end of the day.
The same goes with sticky notes that get plastered around the edges of the monitor, and even scraps of paper floating around the desk (and floor… and ceiling!). One of the best, yet simplest, uses of Evernote has been to store those day-to-day snippets of information in a more organized, less cluttered manner. Let Evernote clean your office.
2. Share information unobtrusively: instead of being “that guy” who sends every last scrap of info, relevant or not, in a new email to ten people at a time, store that information with Evernote and share it with the relevant people; you won’t clog up their email anymore, and they have more control of their own time back. It’s hard to zero out an inbox when everything’s being sent there whether you need to deal with it now or not.
3. Sneak some work home without anyone knowing: got a spouse who gets snarky when you bring work home with you? Don’t make it so obvious - just save your material as an Evernote entry and sync when you get home. It’s less likely to be spotted than the bulky folder you walked in the door with last week.
Spouses aside, working in Evernote can make taking your work home a lot easier than emailing Word documents or transferring them to your PDA or laptop before you leave. Just hit the Sync button and you’re done.
While we’re on the topic, from a productivity point of view, work should only be brought home when it’s unavoidable - a good work-life balance is important to maintaining peak efficiency.
4. Create a single research document: I recently wrote an article on digital rights management that involved a lot of online research, which I stored by keeping bookmarks in Firefox. The downside was that when I came back to write, I had to open all my tabs again and find the appropriate sections on each page.
It’s much easier to take the relevant content from each page, including a link in case you need to go back, and pasting them into a single Evernote entry that gives you all the necessary information in a more concise and manageable format. If only I did this at the time!
Instead of bookmarking your resources when you do research online, compile the relevant information from each page into a research file in Evernote.
5. Take notes during meetings without transcribing, or for that matter transferring them to other devices. Type away as your boss prattles on and before you’re even back at the cubicle, the notes are on your desktop (great if you process notes into GTD action items immediately after a meeting).
6. Keep an always-accessible idea file: one of the best things any writer or blogger can do is start an idea file. It can be hard to think of new ideas constantly, and when you do come up with one, it tends to happen in a very strange, awkward spot. Evernote means that you’ll almost never be caught without a way to capture it and compile an idea file - once that list starts filling up you’ll never be short on something to write about.
7. Plan big projects in Evernote - start a new notebook for a particular project and sort different tasks and research topics using the tags feature. Now, everything you could possibly want to recall or act on regarding a project will be in one spot.
Evernote Invitations
If you want to skip the wait to get into the beta, I’ve got five invites in my Evernote account that I can give away. I’ll send them to five commenters who come up with a really unique way to use Evernote in the next twelve hours.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Joel Falconer
Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.
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Comments
Cynthia Gould says on May 26th, 2008 at 10:09 am
This would be BRILLIANT to help my band co-write songs, share marketing ideas, new music, and pass notes to organize rehearsal times!
At the moment we’re firing several emails per day to each other, and it gets very confusing and messy.
If you could spare an invitation, we could put this application to very good use.
Thanks for this article!
Vincent says on May 26th, 2008 at 10:54 am
How about using that nice camera function (Mac) to point at your office desktop and sync all your messages to your holiday spot. That would truly be remote working
Chris Marsden says on May 26th, 2008 at 11:29 am
One of the first people I knew who had an iPhone was using it as a mobile scanner to capture documents. Problem was, it was just one more inbox that he had to deal with. With Evernote, your cell phone just became a portable document scanner that actually integrates with all your other notes and your single point of capture.
LivSimpl says on May 26th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I’ve been using Evernote occasionally for a while now and while everything works wonderfully as you’ve described, I haven’t quite jumped in with both feet. One feature that would help a lot would be the ability to send text messages instead of just e-mail.
Overall, if you can get a beta invite, go for it!
erica says on May 26th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
When my spouse is on night shift and sleeps during the day, I use it to keep track of thought snippets I need to share with him - things I need to ask him to do when he gets up for the night and I go to bed, reminders on discussions we have to have when we can make time to sit and talk, even little interesting bits such as funny sites I found or the funny thing our son did so I can share it with daddy when he gets up. Otherwise, by the end of the day I’ve forgotten every little thought I wanted to share with my spouse, and he’s in a hurry to get out the door to work.
(P.S. no beta invite needed, I’m already using the beta, however I can’t wait till it’s ready for Firefox 3! Otherwise I’m stuck using FF2 or IE, or just sticking with the desktop and mobile clients)
erica says on May 26th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Here’s another one - I’m currently working from home most of the time, though I have a computer at work, take a laptop to the library to do research, and carry a phone with windows mobile. I like to keep snippets of thoughts on just about anything - ideas and research yes, but also tangents such as library books to search for, information to get from the business analyst or marketing department at work, or notes on proposals and deliverables, on evernote. Then whether I am at home or on the road, I can always capture questions and impressions to share with my coworkers when I’m back in the office.
Jason says on May 26th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Great post, and I’ve been contemplating switching over to evernote as a full-fledged replacement for my crazy desktop/notepad filing system now. So I don’t have any creative uses *yet* but with a beta invite, I can promise I’ll come up with some pretty unique ones most likely .
Alex says on May 26th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Use Evernote to track your web purchases and their associated tracking/reference numbers. This would make holiday shopping a bit more organized if you’re an online shopper. Also keep a file of gift ideas that you have for various people throughout the year so when it comes time to buy a present, you already have some ideas.
Chris Guillebeau says on May 26th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I’d love to give it a try, especially for the web interface and the international travel that I do. Personally I haven’t been that impressed with similar services in the past, but I’d be willing to try this one with an open mind.
Thanks for the mini-review!
Tony Serva says on May 26th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I am in the middle of having to get up to speed on .net and also flex while also needing to migrate from sql 2000 to 2005 or 2008. We are a small shop and I need to be a jack of all trades. I find my studies and research to be less than linear and think this application would help to organize my work and make it easy to refresh my memory when I get back to a topic I have not worked on for some weeks.
PS I love your site and keep sending links from it to my kids in college and nephew and niece. Great work!
Kev says on May 26th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
sounds great, perhaps one you’ve sent me an invite (hint hint) I could use it as an online back up of my study notes currently dispersed amongst cds and eternal hard drives.
Shane Robinson says on May 26th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
As a programmer, system administrator, and video editor/producer, I’m constantly searching for snippets of code, video editing tips and tutorials, etc. and always trying to find a way to organize and keep track of it all.
I currently use a mixture of Yojimbo, OmniFocus, Apple Mail, del.icio.us bookmarks, and text files to keep a lot of this stuff available. Problem is, I can’t always remember if I stored that code block in Yojimbo or within a BBEdit Clipping. It usually depends on where it originated. And don’t get me started on the inability to sync it all between my 3 computers and iPhone…
OmniFocus has been really helpful as my primary GTD system, but there’s still a gap when it comes to capturing all the ideas I have. I found that I don’t want to dump those raw ideas into OmniFocus because they’re not yet ready to be acted upon. So they get scribbled on the whiteboard. Can’t scribble on a whiteboard while sitting in traffic or standing in line.
Evernote seems like the perfect solution to
1. Bridge the gap between the ideas the constantly pop into my head and developing a full fledged project around them in OmniFocus.
2. Store snippets of code. Basically build a code library (and share just parts of it) that I can use no matter which machine I happen to be working on or wherever I happen to be that day.
3. I don’t use del.icio.us for sharing bookmarks with others. I use it so that no matter what computer I’m using I have my bookmarks available. Evernote looks like a much better solution and can store relevant images and text from the bookmarked site to make it a much more useful bookmarking system.
4. Until the iPhone App Store applications begin to show up, there’s currently no way to easily get an idea out of my head, into my iPhone, and synced back to my machines. Looks like Evernote would fill that void (once it ships for iPhone).
5. For our backyard landscaping project, we’re constantly tearing pages out of magazines, taking pics (on our iPhones) of nice yard ideas we see while driving, and clipping articles and images from the web. We, of course, have these distributed all around the house and on different computers. Pics in iPhoto, magazine pages in a folder somewhere, bookmarks in browsers and del.icio.us. Evernote seems like the perfect way to deal with a distributed “multi-media” project like fixing up the yard.
There’s 5 ideas off the top of my head on how I’d use Evernote. I’d love a Beta invite.
Please note that before this article I had never heard of Evernote. I watched his video on the Evernote site, downloaded the Mac version and am very excited to start playing with it!
pstanmt says on May 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Can be used as a diary also since it has automatic date and time stamping
Mike M says on May 26th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Wow! This is what I’ve been waiting for! When I brainstorm, I love using a large whiteboard. I’ve tried other computer based methods and I just don’t think as freely when sitting down. The problem is, short of buying an expensive electronic white board, there is no way to get that data I write on the whiteboard into the computer without sitting down and transcribing it.
Taking pictures of the whiteboard and bringing them into Evernote so I can record and search them in one easy step would be AWESOME!
I’d love to have an invite!
Thanks for a greate site!
-Mike
Kenneth Grazier says on May 26th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I think it would certainly help someone like me who just moved to a new city to help keep everything in some semblance of order. Grocery lists, emails to send, addresses to change, etc.
Lukasz Korbasiewicz says on May 26th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I think that I can use it instead of MS OneNote. Great GTD tool for storing reference materials. I’d be gratful for sending me an invitation.
Barrie says on May 26th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
I’ve been using Evernote intensively over the past couple of months to conduct a sweeping job search. I use the web clipper to save classified ads and then categorize them according to location and the type of job. After I apply for the job, I change the status and use the to-do list with dates option (there’s lots of flexibility as to what *kind* of notes you can make) to track and monitor the emails I’ve sent and the replies or offers they’ve generated. It works like gangbusters, seeing as I have more than 100 job applications/offers in the air right now. When someone calls me for an interview, I can just bring up Evernote and go directly to their info and know immediately what the job’s about and my application history. I use the paste shortcut function to add initial job contracts and documents (resumes, etc) to the relevant notes.
I’m still using the previous version, non-elephant icon, but I’d be pretty charged to switch over.
Duncan says on May 26th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Nice points, thought I’d add one: I use Evernote to digitize and compile all paper correspondence I receive. For example if I receive a bill I scan it directly to Evernote then shred it, reducing the reliance on keeping everything in a filing cabinet. Obviously you have to keep a few things in hard copy, but I’d think 95% of the things I use to file can now be disposed of and it’s a whole lot easier finding them later on evernote.
Robert Cano says on May 26th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I am a Internet Marketer and am constantly having web meetings with cliets, gurus, colleagues, etc. But the problem always has been keeping track of who’s said what, when, where, etc. Evernote seems like the perfect tool to take a pic of the speaker, tag it, and take notes on the conference. Then when I need to review what we went over in our conferences, no more rummaging through my countless stacks of paper… It will just be “BAM!” Dave said this, or Jon pointed this out, or Billy had THIS or THAT great idea. Also, I am constantly losing track of all the different things I am looking at on Craigslist (sometimes 20+ in a single day), and this program seems like exactly what I need to consolidate everything I am looking at on CL on a daily basis… I love Lifehack, and once again I have been introduced to another great program that will bring me one step closer to completely de-cluttering my life
Mike Donovan says on May 26th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I would LOVE an invite for Evernote and here’s why:
1. I am a person who keeps countless notes in a small notebook. I would love to be able to bring them home and scan them right into Evernote.
2. I am writing a book that requires all of my notes being within reach. I would like them all to be on Evernote so I could actually SEARCH for what I have lost!
3. Integration of personal and professional life within one GUI. I like the idea of being able to have all of my digital life (personal and professional) in the same database and searchable within seconds.
After watching the video on the Evernote site, I am convinced I would use this in so many ways they are too numerous to count!
Thank you!
gary says on May 26th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
If they put it out on linux I would be willing to try it. As it stands, I am not about to play with Wine to see if I can get it to work. Tomboy seems to cover most of the functionality I require and it runs on linux.
Joel Falconer says on May 26th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Thanks everyone for the great ideas. Cynthia, Alex, Tony, Shane and Mike; you should have your Evernote invites by now.
To everyone else, if you hop over to Evernote.com you can put your email address down for the beta program. Enjoy!
Peter says on May 27th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Personaly right now I use OneNote 2007 + MS Outlook which is powerful combination in my opion. There you can also synchronize all togethere so I am courious what are advantages of evernote ??
Leon Ho says on May 27th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Couple of advantages of Evernote that strikes me, making it my current note taking system:
- On Mac version, I could use “iSight Note” feature to take pictures of my handwritten notes quickly.
- It can recognize texts in images, making the texts searchable.
- Tagging support
- It supports Mac! I could retrieve my notes from web interface in any computer. iPhone support is coming soon as well.
- It’s free.
Sebo says on May 27th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Does anyone know of any similarities / differences with the google notes service?
I’ve seen that evernote proposes a client application to install, so it’s not only web-based, but I am more wondering on ‘functional’ differences (differences in terms of effective service provided to the end-user).
C.C. Chapman says on May 27th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Wow does this look impressive. I just finished watching the video on the site and I know this is something that I’ve been waiting for, but never knew I needed.
I see things all the time that spark a creative idea for a possible marketing campaign, short film or music video. But, I never seem to be able to find them again and now I can.
For years I’ve written down web addresses, names of bands and other recommendations people have made to me in my moleskin, but it is hard to pull that data out. I just signed up for the BETA and can’t wait to get an invitation.
Rick says on May 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
If someone has an invite, I would love to check this out. It sounds like it’s the answer to all of my prayers.
Mick says on May 27th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Sounds good! I’m always taking notes about great ideas for my blog and random stuff that just seems to clutter my desk. Thanks, I can’t wait to use it.
Joel says on May 27th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I have been using onenote but this is better as it provides online interface…
busse says on May 27th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Among other things, I’ve been working on going paperless with Evernote. The Mac client supports PDFs, and it can be set to monitor a folder, and I have my scanner set to one-touch document scanning.
So, I put my document into my scanner, press the button, and it gets scanned and synced into Evernote and is not available to all my other devices.
jarhead says on May 27th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
iPhone support is already there. Go to evernote.com via your Safari browser on your iPhone.
Dan says on May 27th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Also don’t forget to check out Luminotes at http://luminotes.com/
It’s a web-based personal wiki, which means you can even share the wikis you create with friends if you so desire.
matt says on May 27th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
“One of the best, yet simplest, uses of Evernote has been to store those day-to-day snippets of information in a more organized, less cluttered manner. Let Evernote clean your office.”
Which could be done with a thousand other programs that do the exact same thing. You should have skipped to the features that makes evernote different.
If you write to the lowest common denominator, which you’re doing, your wasting your time.
Chris McCracken says on May 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am
One of those features is the OCR capability Evernote has built in. I photograph or scan all the business cards I get and can search them in Evernote.
I can do the same thing with whiteboards of information.
That’s what I like most about it.
David Pierce says on May 28th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Great article! I’ve recently gotten into Evernote. It’s really heplful because it’s so portable, particularly now that the iPhone version is so improved. I blogged about how I use Evernote over at my own blog, which I’m just starting (sorry for the shameless plug.) It’s http://www.whatwereinto.com. Keep up the good work!
GregC says on May 29th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Your Evernote account comes with an e-mail address to which you can send notes and they’ll end up in your Evernote database.
Using this and your cell phone’s camera, you can capture things in a photo and send it directly to your Evernote database. Evernote’s OCR capability will make the image searchable. Great for capturing business cards.
You can also use jott.com to send transcribed voice notes to Evernote. Set your Evernote accounts e-mail address up as a jott contact. The transcribed “jott” will end up in Evernote and since its text, its searchable.
Roachy says on June 5th, 2008 at 7:28 am
It would be brilliant, but for lack of *nix support.
I’ve just started using basKet as an alternative which does a great job. It doesn’t have all the features of Evernote, but by combining with tools like Unison, you can sync with a server, etc…
Danny says on June 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I’ve got about 19 invites for the evernote (Mac) beta, send me a msg if you want one…..
Matt Tennison says on June 16th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I’d love an invite! Always up for another productivity tool.
Timuche says on June 19th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
First, has it been discussed wether Evernote would be an efficient Personnal Knowledge Managment System for schoolers ?
Then, if it remains any invits, I’d love to get one. Thx ^^
ultrasur1@gmail.com says on June 20th, 2008 at 8:40 am
hit me up at my screen name via gmail for invites. i have a few to share
Timuche says on June 20th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Thank you for the invite ^_^