HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Over a year ago I attempted to make use of Evernote to keep track of things to do after reading a few blog posts on Getting Things Done (well, mainly The Secret Weapon ). I used the suggested tagging system and began to categorise the notes and ideas I’d saved.
However one of the biggest challenges was retrieving the list of notes. At school we do not have the Evernote Desktop application but were able, after a bit of wrangling, to gain access to the Evernote web app. However using Evernote with IE8 wasn’t the easiest: formatting errors and sluggish response made efficient use of non-contact time tricky. So I tried the Android app on my phone. It was more responsive but harder to search. As time went on I trusted the system less and it was replaced by Wunderlist 2 for my phone and – in time – the iPad used during the #RGCdevicetrial. Unfortunately syncing issues between devices where items I’d previously completed reappeared or items I’d added on one device didn’t appear on another killed my trust. I was also slightly unhappy about the disconnect between Wunderlist 2 and Evernote – knowing which tasks I’d completed required using Wunderlist and once the synchronising issues began, it wasn’t a reliable gauge.
Over Christmas I read a few blog posts on productivity and the pros and cons of a clean workspace ( Clean Your Desk and Save Your Career with GTD , Cross Disciplinary Evil of Clutter , Why You Should Have a Messy Desk ). Bill Meade’s words had the most impact and I decided to revisit the GTD system I’d implemented in Evernote as a result. Now the Desktop application allows shortcuts and I already use this to jump straight to my blogging notebook. I decided to try saving searches to quickly show the notes categorised as now, next and soon but then had difficulty finding the saved searches. A few more internet searches led me to discover that you can drag saved searches to the shortcut section in Evernote – result!
Now my important searches are quickly available:
I was also pleased to see that the saved searches syncronise to the web app too!
And the iPad app gives me the same searches!
At the time of writing I have just short of 5000 notes in Evernote. Only 318 have been moved to the “Completed” notebook and a further 1000 have been categorised. I have a bit of pain to go through before I see the gain!
