From Evernote:

Evernote Blog Post

Everyone and their brother is posting articles about how they use Evernote. For god sakes, we know you can keep notes in it people. We know you can post pictures in it.. please give me insight in to how you integrate into your daily routine! I’d love to learn more ways to be productive with it.. but your lack of detail kills me! I want to learn good information from you.. not that you have 7 ways to tell me what I already know. I am being selfish. you have figured out how to use Evernote.. I want you to share! 🙂

OK. so you are wondering now, how does JEFF use Evernote?

Folder Structure

I try to keep the folders to a minimum. I will explain the use for what I have.. and I feel it is working.

Daily Visit

I keep things like a Recent Achievements note, project list note, etc.. Things that I may need to see or edit daily. Including my dashboard for my product reporting. The links are in here.

Inbox

This is my default folder. All new notes go in here to be processed GTD style. (well, pseudo GTD) But I know emailed notes, new iPhone notes, etc will all show up here.

LOLs

Shared public folder I put funny comics, etc into. Then I can just email people a link to this shared folder and quit spamming you all with jokes. You can go look if you want.

Main

This is my main archive. It’s sibling is WORK. Everything personal goes into MAIN.

Projects

This is where I keep my project notes. (See below)

Public Tips

If I have to write up tips for friends, like how to remove a virus from their PC (I own a Mac), or how to do X or Y.. I try to write it up, put the links in the note and publish it publicly. Then I can reuse them.

Research

I put all my research findings into this one folder for easy searching. Why don’t I just drop them into my WORK folder you ask? Well, I am hoping one day there is an easy feature to exclude a folder from default searches. I am planning for that feature. One day it will come and I don’t have to include hundreds of research notes/pdf’s returning false positives.

QUICK RANT:

Evernote team, please allow a property on folders to be excluded from searching by default. Then if I want to search that folder, I can do it on my own.

Templates

This is where I keep my templates. (see below) I just copy and paste the body into new notes when needed. I have new project templates, new meeting notes, etc.

Work

This is my work archive, it’s sibling is my MAIN archive.

Here are some of my Business uses

Project Tracking

I have a folder called Projects. I put each of my current projects in here under it’s own note. I title them as PROJECT: Project Name to help them stand out.. then I use a default template for each project.

I keep the project template in a folder called templates, then just copy and paste the entire body into a new note when I need it. Much easier than saving out as an evernote file and trying to import each time. Plus, fully self-contained

Meeting Notes

I try to keep all of my meeting notes in Evernote. I title them MEETING NOTES: Meeting name. Then add a tag for the project, and a tag for each person in attendance. This way, if I remember a meeting I had with John.Smith, I can search for tag:meeting tag:john.smith and find a good list. Then, I use a default meeting notes template.

I also embed a default mind map template for meetings which I find is a good way to capture notes if I don’t have to be engaged in lots of the conversation. This is the best part of embedding files. You can have templates in other docs that are useful. If you used spreadsheets for certain projects, put the default template in there.

White Boards

I take pictures of all my white board drawings, notes on white boards in meetings, etc. Then I tag them appropriately with each project name, key words, etc. For meeting specific pictures, I move the pictures into any note that was for a meeting.

Here is the kicker for these. I process almost all of the pictures with JotNot. If I am using the pics in my own template, I embed them just as normal. If someone else (like a PGM) has asked to see my pictures, I use JotNot to create all of the pics into a single PDF and send it over.. I also then embed the PDF at the end of the doc.

QUICK RANT:

Evernote team, why can’t I make a PDF a thumbnail? I know in most cases it works great as a full file.. but sometimes I want it to act like other attachments.

Business Cards

Everytime I get a business card, I take a pic, JotNot it and save to Evernote. I then tag them with the company name, position of the person (ceo, cmo, etc) and tag:businesscard. I can now easily find business cards. My electronic Rolodex.

Receipts for Travel

I take pics of all receipts while coming back on the plane from a business trip. I use JotNot to correct the images, tag with the trip info and save for later use. Then if I happen to lose them, I still hopefullly have a copy.

Reading To Go

Often I get things I need to read, but now is not the right time. It might be better to just read it on the bus on the way home. I put all emails, PDFs, docs, presentations into their own note with just a tag:ToRead. Then I have a saved search ToRead that let’s me find all my “to go” reading items. My own “read it later” program. Once read, I typically delete them as it was a task.. but they could be archived.

EMail Templates

Sometimes I need to send the same thing over and over again to people. Internal Wiki links, documents, attachments, etc. I just create a series of EMail templates to be used as needed. Then if someone asks me “Where are the reporting links for project X”, I can send an email to the wiki link for future reference as well as the actual data they needed.

Here are a couple of personal use cases

Bookmark Archive

I used to use delicious.. but decided I was not into sharing all the links publicly like that. Some where private work links that I may want to encrypt. So.. I now just capture pages, add tags for the items I would remember them by.. and a tag called bookmark.

Later, I can search for tag:bookmark tag:tips – which would return all bookmarks that I had tagged with tips.

QUICK RANT:

Evernote Team: The Safari capture tool was the best. It truly captured a PDF of the entire page, maintained formatting, etc. The current Chrome capture leaves a horribly formatted page. Please make this work better.. even if you end up doing server side PDF creation and embedding.. something. It sucks now.

Reduction of my wallet

I took all the cards out of my wallet, took pictures of the items, used JotNot to clean them up, uploaded them all into Evernote and tagged them all with tag:wallet and the other corresponding tags. Now my wallet is smaller and I have easy access to everything I needed in those scrap things I saved. Now when I need my Sheraton rewards number, I search for tag:wallet tag:sheraton and BAM! Done.

Insurance Cards

I took pics of all my insurance cards and tagged them by vehicle, year, INSURANCE. Now I know I will always have proof even if it isn’t in my car.

Gift Ideas

I take pictures of things I see that someone may like, tag it with giftidea, person, birthday/Christmas. Then I can sort by all gift ideas for a given person for an event. Makes it easy to remember cool ideas for people. Great for while out and about shopping.

Light Bulbs

I take a picture of odd lightbulbs in my house, tag them as lightbulb, master.bedroom and then I can find them easily.

Serial Numbers/Downloads

Any purchase I make online for software, I put the serial number and file into a note so it is archived and available.

Draft Documents

Any emails, blog posts, etc I need to do, I typically do them in a new note in my INBOX in Evernote first. Then only move out of Evernote once it is done. This makes sure it is available from anywhere.

Typical Camera Memory shots

Things like Wine, mexican sour cream, license plate, parking location, etc. These are quick and easy.. everyone does these. Tagging and saving.

Things that Evernote is missing

I believe Evernote is an amazing tool. .and keeps getting better over time. I do however have a few serious rants. You’ve seen a couple above, but there are some that really kill me.

Formatting

This is my number one pet peeve. Formatting on my Mac, iPhone and Web don’t stay consistent. It is like working in a very bad hack-word processor. It just plain sucks to make nice looking notes, and keep them formatted correctly. This has got to be fixed.

Non-Linear Notes

OneNote is kicking Evernote’s butt here. Sometimes my notes should not be just a text file. Maybe I do want to place free floating containers around the page and move them, etc. Sure.. I can’t do it from my iPhone, but 99% of my editing is on my Mac. Don’t make it just a text file. Give me a more fluid experience.

Plugins

I’d love to have a MindMap plugin. Can someone make it for me? Rather than attaching it? What about embedding maps? or an editable spreadsheet? or.. heck, what about using a plugin to create a Gantt chart capability?

Integration with Google Wave

OK, maybe a stretch here.. but embedding a wave inside Evernote would rock.

Auto-Extraction of To-Do items

Sure, a checkbox is nice in a page… but without the meta data of an actual task being assigned, there is no single view to see all my TODOs. This is a pain. Again, OneNote wins here.

History of closed To-Do

I’d like to know what I completed as well, in a timeline. Maybe auto-generate weekly status reports for me 🙂

Templates

I really think that you need to bring back templates. People could create templates, premium templates, etc. Then, I could say New Note From Template, and choose one of my own, or a public one. KEY THING is your formatting would need to be better. Imagine backgrounds, structured templates, etc. Could be amazing.

Google Docs Integration

Maybe you could sync with Google Docs and allow offline access to files through Evernote? Docs could show up as notes, while Spreadsheets and Presentations could be attachments. If I edit them, once I go back online, they sync.

Better Formatting for capturing web pages

This is just plain horrible unless you use the Safari plugin. Please fix

Inline Webpages, Full and Clipped (iFrame)

It’d be great to provide a URL that is embedded into the site. This would allow me to do a Google Docs form, create a note that has the form in it.. each time I go to the note, I can fill out the form. Would be great for data capture. Would also be nice for web-clipping for things like bus schedules,etc. (not full pages, but partial)

Maps on the Mac

I’d like to create lists that are location aware (Shopping by store) as well as see where I took notes by location.

FINAL THOUGHT

I hope this has been helpful. I will continue to try to find ways to let Evernote do what my brain is horrible at doing. Organizing and Remembering. Thanks to the little elephant. (and his team of handlers) If you have any tips, I’d love to hear them.. but please, don’t just tell me you use it for notes and taking a picture. 🙂

If Evernote can keep this up.. I see us all using the digital camera video life-cast capture right into Evernote in a few years with face recognition, voice search, location aware.. that will be both helpful and creepy all at once.