Using Evernote: How I process my Stuff
I’ve been using Evernote extensively now for the last 3 months, not sure what Evernote is check out my Evernote Review or my guide to Goal tracking with Evernote I have found it a great tool to keep my blogging and work notes together. Here’s a practical run through of the way I integrate using Evernote into my daily work, what I use it for and a tip or two from having bumped my head before..
There are a few main categories of stuff that I capture using Evernote:
- Post Ideas are easily captured using Evernote, due to the many mobile capture methods
- Post Outlines can easily be worked out using Evernote for easy capture and the ease of organizing using Evernote
- Offline posts can be written offline and easily saved using Evernote this is an excellent way to safeguard against technical failures which could devour your carefully chosen words.
- Posts which I’ve read and would like to keep as reference material for future projects are easily stored and indexed using Evernote
- Screen shots are a dream to work with using Evernote, Evernote treats notes like any other note due to the great OCR implementation
- HTML code which I use for formatting my blogs and postsare easily kept safe and accessible from any location using Evernote
- Offline Comments, I’m constantly using Evernote to capture comments offline when I’m reading my RSS feeds offline.
Post Ideas, Outlines and Offline Posts
This is where using Evernote makes most sense to me, the fact that you can capture information so easily and from so many devices. I primarily use my old battered Nokia N81 for these tasks. Post Ideas, I tend to just pop onto the Evernote WAP site, jump to the appropriate Evernote notebook and capture away. This is great for unplanned blocks of free time, when you’re waiting for the dentist or your flights been delayed. Over and above this using the Evernote WAP site allows you to leverage your more creative and possibly less connected time.
Ever wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea? Have you ever plugged in your laptop and typed it? Nope me neither and pen and paper has the disadvantage of requiring you to go put the light on. The Evernote WAP site allows you to very quickly login and capture and be back to sleep before you know it. Evernote Wap works just as effectively in the bathroom, I’m not going into anymore detail than that … Use it for quick outlines, grabbing post ideas or even putting down that opening paragraph that just flashed through your head and gave you goosebumps.
Hint:
When you bookmark the Evernote Wap site bookmark the version without thumbnails, I find the site gets ridiculously unwieldy when you’ve built up a nice collection of notes and have to scroll past a ton of thumbnails.
To create an an Evernote bookmark without the default thumbnail view:
- Scroll to the bottom of the Evernote welcome screen
- Select settings
- Uncheck Display thumbnails
- Exit settings
- Bookmark the Evernote WAP site
Posts I’d like to keep as Reference material and Screen shots
I’ve stopped bookmarking sites in my browser so long ago I don’t’ think I even remember how to do it. I read most of my content via RSS feeds which gives me the advantage of being able to access up to date information offline. Bookmarks don’t quite work the same way and to keep an extensive collection of bookmarks becomes tedious. With Evernote I just grab the section of text or the entire article I want and presto
- it’s in Evernote and I can view it from any computer with an internet connection and I can view it offline from the Evernote application once it’s synced.
- I can search Evernote and it will bring back results based on the title of the notes as well as the content. Which allows one to get at the meat and potatoes of the content that much easier, With this setup one can very quickly build up a large collection of resources with searchable content.
Need information on personal development? Search personal development on Evernote and all the reference articles you’ve save with personal development in it pop up and you can quote, reference etc to your hearts content. Even better Evernote searches your saved Screen shots as well. Yes you heard me right. So if I take a screenshot of a quotation for example, if the screenshot has the word quotation on it, if I search for quotation, the screenshot will come back in the search results. For this purpose I tend to only use the full Evernote website and the Evernote application. Screen shots can only be taken directly into Evernote using the Evernote application.
HTML code
These are snippets of frquently used code which are location independant. I used to use Google notebook for this but I keep my post layout templates and tracking code on Evernote This allows me to quickly push out a post with basic formatting and tracking wherever I am that has the internet. Failing that it allows me to write posts offline and add the relevant HTML prior to posting. This is also useful for Affilliate and adsense code which you may use often.
Offline Comments
I find myself using Evernote for this more and more often, as I stated earlier I do most of my blog reading via RSS and quite a bit of that is offline. Using the Evernote application I am able to keep make comments on these offline posts and keep them somewhere that will definitely be available when next you go on-line. The most effective way of doing this is using the WAP site as it updates Evernote immediately using the application can become problematic as it won’t be online until the computer you’ve used is online again. Capturing on Evernote Wap gives the advantage of your information being immediately available on-line.
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Great post! I must admit, I tried Evernote, and never really got hooked because it didn’t seem to offer anything more than a social bookmarking site. But I’m obviously not taking full advantage of everything it has to offer. I’ll give it another try.
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I’ve realised what I didn’t like was that all my web clippings lost their CSS and everything was in basic HTLM text and therefore not as appealing to read. Is there any way of keeping the format of web clippings?
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Unfortunately not. I know for many this is a bit of a deal breaker, prior to evernote I was using a Fire fox plugin called Read it Later, and actually kept using it for awhile afterward. Ultimately I had to make decision between having all my info available and searchable versus using a different tool or a seperate tool to clip sites. Because I primarily consume blogs this was an easy decision. I generally just clip the text and preserve the link to the site for reference.
A good plan may be to use an additional tool like read it later for those elements you’d like to save and keep with formatting preserved and possibly save the text elements in evernote or try one of these alternatives which have bet clipping but overall, in my opinion, less functionality.
Yojimba and Devonthink spring to mind though neither of these have reasonably usable free versions.
As annoying as not having the css is, for me personally, the advantage of having all my “stuff” in one place outweighs it.
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Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment, feedback is always greatly appreciated. I’ve been experimenting with some new “higher-grade” uses for Evernote which I’ll give my thoughts on soon
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Your readers should know about (www.memcatch.com) It allows for the aggregation/webclipping side of things and also focuses on the sharing of this knowledge across social networks. The iPhone app, desktop client (for all platforms), LinkedIn, & Facebook are coming out in the next couple months and integration with Twitter already exists. It also doesn’t stop at web clippings, will soon include: email integration (syncs with emails and lets you flag the ones you want to keep directly to your knowledge base), learning management system integration (for students), and RSS feed integration. Group collaboration is also currently a part of its functionality.
Because this online software has a “post it on the internet” option for any work you want to go public with, Incorporating your message into many different social networking sites such as memcatch increases the effectiveness of your marketing, and you will more easily be found by search engines.
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Hi Michael,
This is the first time I actually understood what Evernote is used for, it sounds interesting. I never work offline and don’t pay much attention to anything in my RSS feed. I even need to remind myself to look at my own blog feeds once in awhile. LOL
I did hear about Memcatch before but once again, not the offline capabilities. I need to look into both of these because my DSL connection goes down frequently.
Thanks for the information, I enjoyed the read.
@Ileane
ileane´s last blog ..Fun Twitter Promotions for Your Blog
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Michael Fletcher Reply:
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Evernote really is an enormously useful application, especially if you’re using the pc app offline or the wap site. You just can’t put a price tag on having all your references and tools at hand online or off and a safe spot to save your priceless ideas when on the go. One additional thing I’ve started keeping in evernote which I haven’t updated on my list is a complete list of permalinks for my blog so I can add links when I write offline
Glad this was useful
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