So I’ve been listening to the Crazy Dad Life podcast and getting lots and lots of ideas of how to improve my life. Jeff has a way of making things so reasonable that I can’t help but think that I should try some of his ideas out. I’m already using Google Calendar. We use it as a family and then interlink where necessary. Everybody in the family (aside from Hectic Mom, because she’s a Luddite!) has a personal Google Calendar. Then we have one for Birthdays, Driving, Entertainment, Kid’s Stuff, Hectic Family Events, School, Sports, Sports Practice, Travel, and Work Schedule. If something is going to impact more than one person, we try to put that on one of the shared calendars. It’s gotten to the point where we invite each other to lunch or other events through the Google Calendar/Gmail interface. It may sound excessive, but there are eight kids and two parents, and we’ve got such crazy schedules that we had to do something.
So, I was listening to episode 7 and Jeff was extolling the virtues of Evernote. It’s a tool that I’ve had for years. Of course, that simply means that I thought it was a good idea and I downloaded it to several devices. Oddly (for me, anyway) I didn’t even setup and account. I usually jump right in, register, and then take forever to figure out what to do with the tool. More often than not, I drop the ball, get bored, or simply forget that I have the tool/account. Unfortunately, the latter happens more than I will admit. As always, if you tell my kids that I’m admitting to forgetting things I will unfriend you, block you, and never speak to you again. LOL.
So today I decided that I would use my snippets of time to investigate Evernote. I found the app was already on my iPhone and iPad. I then downloaded it on my Windows 7 main desktop (for now) computer. I started the install and got bored waiting for everything to happen. I grabbed my Mac Powerbook and downloaded, installed, and configured Evernote while I was waiting for the Windows 7 machine. I guess I need to add a task to cleanup my desktop computer to my ever-expanding list of Todos!
But back to the task at hand. Now that I have Evernote installed in several places I went about creating Notebooks to help separate what I need to do. First issue I ran into, notebooks are a single layer. That is, you can’t nest notebooks. Developers always tell me I shouldn’t need to nest notebooks, that one layer is fine. It’s odd how many products (ToodleDo, for example) have that ability to nest folders/events/tasks in their Premium versions despite the developers telling me I’m being overly complicated in my system setup. Quite honestly, I know how I want my folders. My physical filing cabinets are arranged a particular way. The Electronic folders match that. My e-mail also matches. Yes…I’m a bit OCD about it, but this system has developed over 30+ years and it works for me. So when I add a tool, I really want it to match the rest of my reality. I’ll get over it (I use a workaround where the folder names are preceded by an indicator, so for instance all the Hectic-Dad folders start HD- but it drives me nuts to be flat-filed).
Eventually I got the basic notebooks created. This is the basic way to organize and separate notes in Evernote. I also took the opportunity to read the getting started info and watched the introductory video. Both were really good, and got my mind thinking about some ways to use Evernote. Now I’ve got all these great ideas, but the proof will be in whether I can actually get them executed.
During the writing of this blog post, I’ve added five items to Evernote without even really thinking about it. I’m going to have to get used to entering stuff via iPad and Phone (since those are always with me) and then managing the entries. Tasks are still going to be managed in ToodleDo. Well actually, I’m going to go back to managing tasks in ToodleDo. More on that in another post.
But for now I’ve started to capture some things in Evernote. I’ll be updating this thread from time to time, so keep following my journey. If you are using something to track your ideas, manage your tasks, or do anything productivity-related…please let me know. I’m always open to new ideas. Frankly, I can use all the help I can get.
Hi Jeff.
Evernote actually DOES support nesting. They call it Notebook Stacks. I put more details and a link to the video in my reply on my blog. http://www.crazydadlife.com/007/ But basically, you just drag one notebook onto another and bingo!
I’m still discovering ways to use Evernote. For instance, I’m doing a lot more these days with capturing screen prints for an entire website and tagging notes.