i wanted to write about evernote for a long time, but i never had the motivation to do it, but i have been spreading and telling about the goodness about it in person among my friends, a friend who started using it wanted me to write a blog post on it. so here i am.

getting organized with evernote

before we go into any details, please do understand evernote doesn’t automate any work for you – it is your self discipline to keep it organized the way you want it to be.

i was inspired by David Allen’s book Getting Things Done(GTD), so my style of getting organized will have greater influence of David Allen’s GTD.

my evernote contains the following notebooks(yes, with the numbers)

  • 0.DailyGTD
  • 1.CollectionBox
  • 2.ProcessBox
  • 3.GenReferences
  • 4.Office
  • 5.Personal
  • Project#1

 

Notebook, their content, purpose and other details:-

0.DailyGTD:-

in this notebook i have 2 pages created with the specified title

  • Goals-Personal

– here you can write as many personal goals as you want, from big to small, dated to undated, everything that comes to your mind, just write it here, write one personal goal per line, preferably in a bulleted list.

- have a practice to weed off the duplicates/similarities at the regular interval

- once completed / achieved strike it off and let it be there, when you are doing your weed off activity for the page, move all the achieved list to bottom

  • Goals-Official

- similar to above specified details, except here you will write only the official stuff, eg: 1. prepare document on xyz, 2. achieve target abc etc.,

  • Month – Year (eg: December – 2009)

- create a page for subsequent months, thats your responsibility

- enter the current date (ctrl + ;) and write down the action items for the day beneath the date – when the task completed strike off( evernote offers check box also), it is our responsibility to keep this page updated everyday at the beginning and strike off the completed at the end of day. make it a habbit to review it before you start your work and before calling it a day.

- at the end of month, scan through the list and identify any key milestones achieved, failures(learning) etc. write it down at the bottom of the page.

1.CollectionBox:-

- this is very important box, we can post all our random thoughts, notes, into this notebook. every note here need to be processed and put into appropriate notebook or page, eg: if the note is about official goal, append that note into goal list, if the note is not useful delete it, if the note is for future reference put into GenRefernces notebook.

2.ProcessBox:-

- this notebook should be your current work table(imagine) everything spread across this table, is need to be worked upon. assume you are working on some research topic, have a note open and jot down every possible gatherings. once the research is done, outcome is ready, you can either move this note to office/personal/GenReferences or even delete it.

- this include your copied articles to read later

- have the habit of moving non working or completed note to be moved to its appropriate places, only the working note should be kept here.

3.GenReferences:-

- any note that is has some value in the future, but no immediate need for it, will be moved here

- only the notes that doesnt belong to either office or personal, eg: online transaction screenshot, customer care complaint number etc.

- it is good practice to tag them, appropriately. this notebook will grow very quickly and it will become difficult to find required information in time.

4.Office:-

- Any processed note that is from ProcessBox for Office will be kept in this notebook.

5.Personal:-

- Any processed note that is from ProcessBox for Personal will be kept in this notebook.

Project#1:-

- if you are working on any extra project, note relevant to this project will be stored here.

this is the flow that is very much comfortable for me, even i haven’t implemented everything explained in GTD book, but i am using only the one that is good for me, you can have your own customization and flow, all you need to make sure is – you need to check it as frequent as possible, be very disciplined about it.

proceeding further, in next blog i will write about

1. how to have evernote data secured in office computers

2. some tools that work along with evernote that makes life easier.

questions?