Evernote Review | Monetize Your Life

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Optimizing Your Time Online

By Michael Fletcher On July 12, 2011 · 18 Comments

I find that my online time is often unstructured and extremely unexciting going through the same routine refreshing pages on social media sites and generally waiting for things to happen. It doesn’t have to be this way!

Why have a structured surfing schedule?

You have a truckload of goals, personal goals, professional goals, social goals and whole host of other goals I haven’t thought of. All the information you need is out there on the web. l haven’t seen it out there but I have faith that for pretty much any problem you encounter some helpful soul has posted a solution. The only reason you still haven’t found your solution? You haven’t been looking. In life we thrive on routine, achieving goals require chains of complex unrelated non-routine activities which quite frankly leave us all feeling uneasy.

Ok Ok so I need a web surfing schedule now what?

Go grab a pen and paper and write down the areas in which you have goals.
In most cases you are probably visiting a site on this topic already use Google to find similar sites buy using the “related” command in order to use it, just type related:<website> in the Google search box and it will give you a list of sites similar to the one you’ve selected. This is also a great tool to check out who your competition is if you have a website or blog.
Now schedule some time weekly to go web site scraping, no not the bad kind of scraping where you steal info. Go forth and scrape the sides and corner of the web looking for content.
Set a time limit on your social networking. Sites like twitter are very useful as they don’t require a huge investment of time however some other site can cause users to fall into the trap of sitting waiting for content. It’s the social networking equivalent of 500 tv stations and nothing to watch, so you end up app surfing bad plan. Approach your social networking with a plan. If everyone you know is online spend time catching up. if no one is online maybe send some personal messages to friends you haven’t spoken to in a while. Send the boss the link to an interesting site you visited. Send a proffessional message to a client reminding them you’re still alive and care about your relationship with them. Social media/networking can add a great deal of value to your life and business. Use it don’t let it use you.
Move work that doesn’t need to be done online offline. I’ve often popped online to update a post or write an e-mail only to end up being swept away down a river of unneccesary information by a single errant click. I find typing my e-mails and blog posts offline I can reduce the risk of being distracted by the bright shiny lights of the internet.
Do the most important things first. Start your schedule with items that have fixed times to them like writing a post or checking your web analytics. Leave more open ended tasks like checking your Rss feeds, researching a post or social networking for last. This way you know that the important things are done which will quieten your mind considerably and you won’t feel the time pressure to complete these tasks so you can move on to what you know must be done.
Share site you find with your network and encourage other to do the same. The web is huge don’t re-invent the wheel involve your contacts and find out what they’re tracking that you’re not it’ll save you heaps of time. Perhaps use your social media sites to pose the question, or start a group or a Lens asking the question “what site do you spend the majority of your time on” the sky is the limit.

I hope you find this list to be useful I believe if you can find more structure in the way you approach your time on the net you’ll soon start finding the web your best ally in achieving your goals rather than a distraction from it.

Update

I recently started using Evernote, see my Evernote Review. I have found this tool indispensible for capturing bits of text or even whole pages from sites I’d like to keep as reference. I highly recommend using Evernote to keep track of your reading material and even of your time online. Evernote’s biggest advantage is that everything is stored online so you can access your notes from virtually anywhere.

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Evernote Review: Online note taking software Pc and Mobile

By Michael Fletcher On July 12, 2011 · 38 Comments

I am currently busy with a barrel load of projects. As a result my brain has fired into creative overdrive with new ideas constantly bubbling up to the surface. I find myself making tons of notes daily, on scraps of paper, in the little notes editor on my phone, in text files on my work laptop, on Keynote on my home pc and on mind maps in F reemind . All in all I do a lot of note taking all over the place which is not bad. I’d rather have all of these bits of information in existence on paper and out of my head. I’m really not that bright and need to keep the clutter to a minimum. Up until now though I’ve relied on my poor addled brain to keep track of all my note taking and ideas. Enter Evernote the note taking web site and software which I have now been using for a week for this review and have been thoroughly impressed with thus far!

What is Evernote?

Evernote note taking site is basically a bit of space online where you can capture and review your notes, lists, e-mails, pages you’ve visited, pictures, audio clips movies and pretty much anything else under the sun you need to keep track of even tweets. “Bah humbug” I hear you snorting, yes I know there are tons of other note taking alternatives to Evernote that can do the same. The Devil they say is in the details though and the Evernote site and it’s associated apps is one horny bastard. Grab your pitch fork and waddle along with me now as I share my Evernote review and explain why it rocks hardest.

Evernote Premium

Evernote comes in two flavors free and premium. I have not tried Evernote Premium version during this Evernote Review but it offers the power Evernote user:

more space to store information
faster text recognition from image notes
stronger security
the ability to share notebooks for collaboration

During my Evernote review I have found the free version of Evernote extremely feature rich and you don’t really have to upgrade, though I’d like to in the near future, if I use it as much as I expect I will. Not because I have to but it’s nice to contribute when you find a really useful product like Evernote.

Evernote Collaboration

This Evernote review focuses on the free version but the strength of the Evernote Premium version seems to be in the arena of online collaboration. You can allow other Evernote users access to notebooks and review or even edit these shared notebooks. Not only can it be used to review shared Evernote notebooks. Users can actually collaborate online reviewing and editing the same document in real-time on the site or via the Evernote desktop application. During my Evernote Review I found the application ideal for the individual note taking. If you want to extend these benefits to your team you’ll need to upgrade to Evernote Premium.

Text Recognition in Images

One of the really nifty features i found in my Evernote review is that you can finally start treating all your notes the same. Whether it’s a blog post you’ve saved from your browser or it’s a picture you’ve taken of the cover of a book in a bookstore. Evernote can save it for you. Evernote can extract text from images, this means you can search for text amongst your Evernote image “notes”. Very innovative use of the now ancient OCR technology. If this isn’t impressive enough I found out during my Evernote review Evernote even recognizes handwriting in pictures.

Slick Interface

During my Evernote Review I found the website very simple for note taking and it keeps the tools you need easily at hand. It is lightning quick, really it is, everything about Evernote is slick and efficient. Once on the Evernote site you have the option to set up multiple notebooks to organize and review your thoughts as you capture them. Once you start you can add tags and edit attributes to help organize everything about your Evernote Notebooks and that’s about that. When you’re looking to simplify your life the last thing you need is big fiddly solutions with millions of options as I’ve found during my Evernote Review this is simply a note taking application that takes the hell out of notes.

Multi-Platform support makes Evernote ultra mobile

Added to all of this web goodness there’s free Evernote desktop, Evernote iphone, Evernote windows mobile and Evernote OSX software. I found these applications as one of the highlights during my Evernote Review, allowing you to work offline, review and organize your Evernote notebooks and sync your Evernote web notes on the go. This means you are not at mercy of the Evernote website or connectivity when you are mobile. This desktop software also integrates with your browser and Microsoft Outlook allowing you to right-click on a web page you’d like to review later and add it to your Evernote Notebooks or allowing you to add an e-mail or attachment to your notes with one click. Have a Symbian phone, want to use Evernote? Use the Evernote wap site and review your Evernote Notebooks there or capture new notes on the go. If for some reason none of these options are appealing to you, you also have a dedicated e-mail address, send a mail to it and it will automatically get added to your default Evernote notebook to be reviewed at your leisure.

This Evernote review was originally blogged by myself, writing as MikeZilla and that Evernote Review is now updated here

Evernote Review: Program Download Links:

If you’re serious about stress free productivity you should seriously consider using Evernote in conjunction with Getting things Done (GTD)

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Evernote News

By Michael Fletcher On July 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Bits and Bobs

All the current news in the land of digital notetaking and cloud productivity!

How to use Evernote
Evernote News and Tips

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ifttt devonthink (1)

Goal and Objective tracking in Evernote Pt. 2 – Capture

By Michael Fletcher On January 11, 2010 · 22 Comments

In my previous post on Collection for tracking your goals in Evernote, I started bringing together all my clutter and also setting up the bare bones of a Getting things done (GTD) system to organize and review your goals in Evernote. In today’s post we’re going to look at the best ways to capture all the information you’re going to be using into Evernote.

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Using Evernote: How I process my Stuff

By Michael Fletcher On November 12, 2009 · 28 Comments

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:

Writing Ideas are easily captured using Evernote, due to the many mobile capture methods
Blog post Outlines can easily be worked out using Evernote for easy capture and the ease of organizing using Evernote
Blog posts or articles 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.
Blog posts which I’ve read and would like to keep as reference material for future projects are easily captured, stored and indexed using Evernote
Screen shots are a dream to work with using Evernote, Evernote treats image notes like any other note due to the great OCR implementation
HTML code which I use for formatting my blogs and posts are easily kept safe and accessible from any location using Evernote
Adsense – I find it useful to capture backups of all my active adsense code in Evernote, that way I don’t have to trawl through the google interface when I delete a code as I so often do.
Offline Comments – I’m constantly using Evernote to capture comments offline when I’m reading my RSS feeds via my offline reader.