Your Next Project: "Learn Evernote" - Frank Buck Consulting

The subject of the December 1 #ALedchat was “Organization Made Easy.” One of the questions we discussed was: “Do you use Evernote? If so, what are some of the most valuable things you keep there?” Here are some of the responses and the commentary I would like to add.

@Jennifer_Hogan @DrFrankBuck I use Evernote for my meeting agendas. First meeting, I have ask Ts to bring their laptop. #ALedchat

— Remi Racine (@remiroots) December 2, 2014

Would you say Evernote is a “must” in the “teacher world”? Need to get a jumpstart on what I should use for organization. #ALedchat #Ncc2101 — Marissa Almquist (@MarissaAlmquist) December 2, 2014

I suddenly feel the need to try Evernote again. I didn’t think I needed it when I first saw it. #aledchat

— Coach D (@sbcoachd) December 2, 2014

@SKwikkel agreed!!! Evernote may be on the summer “figure out how to work it” list #aledchat — Hannah Davis (@MissDavis_UNI) December 2, 2014

Evernote was discussed not only in this question, but it was mentioned in several other questions as well. Many people create an account, but because they don’t have a good understanding of Evernote, they drop it quickly. After this chat, I think several added “get back on the Evernote bandwagon” to their to-do lists.

In our productivity systems we need these elements:

Calendar for telling me where I am
To-do list for telling me what I need to do
Contacts for holding information about the people in my life
Notes for the pieces of reference information I need to access
Email to serve as the hub of my communication with others

I had been an Outlook user for 10 years before adopted a cloud-based suite. Outlook contained a module for each of the five elements above. The “Notes” module of Outlook held all of the hotel rewards numbers, car VIN numbers, code for copying machine, checklists, and any other type of information I wanted to have close-at-hand. When I left Outlook, I needed a place to hold my notes. That was when I became an Evernote user.

Evernote is significant in two major ways:

The user is able to access and change information from any device. When I use an application such as Dropbox, I can access my information from my mobile devices. However, what is actually happening is that I am downloading another copy of the document to my mobile device. Furthermore, I cannot edit and have changes sync back to the cloud.
Mobile devices do not have good file structures. Evernote supplies the structure which mobiles devices lack.

If you want to make Evernote a part of your productivity arsenal, a good place to start would be with the posts I have written on the subject. You can see the whole list at this link.