How Evernote Saved my Sanity

 

I receive 60 emails a day.  I’ve got 45 active projects between my church work, other work and home.  There are over 60 items on my to-do list and another 60 on my long-range goal list.  I attend 5-7 planned meetings each week, with additional ones as-needed.

 

And Evernote helps me keep it all under control.

 

Here’s how…

 

Before using Evernote, I had four data pools:

1) emails stored/filed by subject or project,

2) to-do lists (I used an application called Remember the Milk),

3) Word files by subject or project,

4) Binders filled with critical documents.

 

Each day I had to spend significant time in each pool.  There was duplication between pools.  At times I couldn’t remember which pool held the information I needed at the time.  And as my project list grew during our congregation’s relocation and building project, this system broke down.

 

Enter Evernote.

 

I made a radical shift and decided to put everything into one pool—Evernote.  Evernote is a cloud-based application accessible through my PC, smartphone and tablet.  Thus, no matter where I am, I can find needed information.  It has a powerful search function and stores Word Docs, scanned images, and photos.  You can create new documents within Evernote as well.

 

Evernote is comprised of notebooks which the user sets up.  With a nod to Getting Things Done, I set up the following notebooks (see below):

In each notebook there are additional notebooks.  For example, the Projects Outside Active notebook contains a notebook for each active project I’m working on not related to my church work or family life (see below):

Each of these notebooks contains all emails, Word docs and other information relevant to the project.  Anything not available in digital form, I scan on a Lexmark scanner which has software already set up to send the scan directly to my Evernote Inbox.

 

I can share notebooks with others using Evernote.  For example my coworker Eric Gentry and I share a notebook which contains our preaching calendar.  We can both access it, revise it and save it.

 

Each project notebook contains a to-do list which is tagged with “to-do.”  At the beginning of each week, I hit a search query which I’ve saved called “All To-Do Lists” (see below):

Every to-do list for every active project pops up and I can quickly review which of those I need to do during the upcoming week.  Once a project is finished, I move the entire notebook to Projects Archived.  This way the information is still accessible, but it no longer shows up on my searches for to-do’s related to active projects.

 

I also keep an active to-do list stored in my Next Actions notebook.  It’s divided into days and has a general to-do list for items that can be done on any day.  Phone numbers and web-links are active so that when I touch them on my phone or tablet they launch automatically.  For longer-term items, I keep a goals list which is stored in my Incubate notebooks.

 

The Meetings notebooks hold all agendas and minutes from the regular meetings I coordinate and/or attend each week.  Any decisions from those meetings are stored there as well.  With a large eldership and staff, we often have different memories of what was decided and when it was decided.  I can quickly pull up minutes from any meeting and resolve those questions.  Evernote’s search function is also capable of searching text in photos and PDF’s which I scan in.

 

Even my spiritual journal has gone digital.  Though I still like pen and paper, I’ve adopted the Evernote Moleskine notebook made for Evernote.  Using the special paper and Evernote-recognized stickers, I can take a photo of each morning’s journal entry with my phone and it automatically makes its way to a personal journal in Evernote.  The text is searchable.

 

Evernote comes with a plug in for Microsoft Outlook which allows me to easily send any email to any notebook in Evernote, eliminating the need for files with Outlook itself.  These become searchable by Evernote.

 

And, Evernote has a clipper which sits on my Chrome menu bar.  When I’m at a website that contains material relevant to a project or item, I can clip it and send it directly to the Evernote notebook.  I often use this while researching for sermon series.

 

I track all expenses in Evernote notebooks and have that information readily at hand.  I scan or take photos with my phone of checks I receive for royalties related to my books and have them readily available in Evernote.  Receipts and other relevant items are scanned and stored there as well.

 

With very recent and radical updates to their tablet and smartphone apps, Evernote has become even easier to use on the go.

 

This is just a brief overview of the way I’ve organized my life through Evernote.  There’s a lot more to share.  If you’re interested in additional conversation, send me some comments below…