Monday, September 15, 2008

Game Changer: Evernote!!

I am always looking for tools to make my life more efficient. Efficiency, I have found, is in the eyes of the beholder. But, for me, I have been looking for a digital way to capture ideas, organize thoughts, create lists and to-do lists. I have a mixed match system of word documents, notepad files, physical post-its, emails to self, electronic post-its, tasks in Outlook, a physical notebook (small and large), a GTD folder. The list is endless. I have looked at tools like One Note and Mind Manager - each I am sure are fantastic, but I just couldn't grasp how to use them. I found that I was spending more time dinking with my new system than gaining any efficiency.

In my mind, my life was too complicated to find a single tool or system that can satisfy my needs. So, I gave in to a physical notebook. One of the guy's on our team refers to it as "my little green book". Not sure why I find that funny, I just do. I carry this beast everywhere, jotting notes in different colors, filled with a variety of note taking systems so I can come back and refer to them later. The thought is that in the evenings, I can then quickly extract this info and then enter it into yet another system. Confused yet? Me too.


I stumbled upon Evernote. Stealing from their website.....
Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.


Always one to love a video explanation, check out the above from the Evernote folks. You are probably getting the idea that it is a "web site grabbing" tool? I use it as so much more than that. Primarily, I use it as a list creation and to-do list tool.

But, above all, what I love the most about Evernote is that I can access it from multiple locations --> local application on my laptop, via the web from any machine or my phone. They are all synched at all times. It gives me the best of all worlds.

A couple of things to note of Evernote as a company. They are gaining a ton of points with me as a customer. They have -- a blog, post to Twitter, have a Facebook fan page and have one of the better forums I have ever used. One of the moderators, Engberg, consistently responds quickly to posts.

I am looking forward to future releases. There are certainly things that could be added, but for now, I'm sold.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Derrek,

Great post on Evernote. We couldn't agree more! We are about to do a major announcement with them in about two weeks. I am going up there to do a video blog with them regarding the announcement. I will let Engberg know that you are a fan...