I couldn’t live without Evernote. I use it to record everything – all my thoughts, lists, and things to remember. It’s not a jobs to do list, that’s quite another thing, but it’s all the information that goes behind my jobs to do. Don’t clutter your brain with stuff, just write it all down, in Evernote or whatever, and then you can be free to be creative, to think, and to have fun.
I love the way it appears on my phone, iPad, desk PC, and laptop. It works without needing an internet connection (you can just sync later) and you can insert pictures, change font size and colour, have bullet points, insert tables, etc. You can search and find things instantly.
And you need never lose a scrap of paper again. If I do have to write stuff on a scrap of paper I usually photograph it and stick the picture into Evernote – it even recognises text in photos, so if you search for the word ‘curry’ it will find a picture of a piece of paper with ‘curry’ scrawled on it. Brilliant! And it’s free!
People sometimes ask “Yes but what do you put in it?”. Maybe other people have simpler lives, I don’t know, but surely everybody has stuff they need to remember? Anyway, just to get you thinking about what you might use it for, here are some of the more respectable things that I have in my collection of 2,415 notes (and by the way, the following list was compiled using Evernote while I was on the Tube)
- Christmas cards sent last year
- Book printing – the various quotes, different quantities and prices, details like page size, margin widths etc
- Car spec for when I get my next one
- Shirt size – collar and sleeve size
- TV series’ to watch on netflix some time
- PowerPoint tips and answers to the problems I always seem to get
- Favourite Haikus
- How to reload my printer drivers – menu, where to click, where the file is stored etc
- Films to see / not see, from recommendations and reviews and trailers I’ve seen
- Africa tips from Kate H, who goes there a lot
- The takeaways we all ordered last time
- Russian words to learn before we go there on holiday
- Combination-lock and briefcase lock numbers
- Copies of standard text I use when replying to certain emails, e.g. enquiries from abroad, or people who have just 2 people they want to train, or people who are interested in coaching
- Who has agreed what, at the start of large projects
- Costs and details of water buses and water taxis in Venice, for when I next go
- Song lyric ideas
- Customers who I have mentioned my e-learning courses to, and those I haven’t yet
- Ideas for magazine articles – the ones still to write, the ones I’ve written, the outlines that have been rejected, and the ones that have been published – don’t want to duplicate any
- The exit code of my accountant’s car park
PS Apple notes is OK, but I think you can’t change the font, can’t insert pictures, and can’t easily view it on a PC, and not when you are off line. Also you can’t import into it and export out of it, which becomes important when you have 2415 notes in there!
PPS Here are the six notes that came up when I searched for Apple Notes before adding that PS just then. A table, a couple of diagrams, a screenshot, etc:
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