Ever heard of Evernote? Are you thinking of using it? Evernote has so many capabilities, and also seems very intuitive to use, it opens up so many possibilities! I tried out Evernote about 2 years ago, but I did not stick with it. In the past few days, I have been thinking about going back and using it again. I have so many things going on that I have a problem with information overload. I feel that Evernote will help me organize the information, make it searchable and easy to retrieve.
If you don’t have or use a SmartPhone, though, I think that you have a major disadvantage, though… which is easily fixable. Really, in my opinion, Evernote loses probably 90% of its effectiveness if you do not use a Smartphone. If you do it only on your computer you are limited to note taking only while sitting at your computer. The vast majority of the time that you need it is when you are out and about. I would say that the most important tool for using Evernote is the Smartphone. Now.. if you have a tablet that you carry everywhere you go, that could be used too. So, if you really want to make Evernote a useful tool, I think that getting a Smartphone is very important. Just my opinion, of course.
About a week ago, I started realizing that I am overwhelmed with information. Yeah, I can go back through old emails and search out information, but it takes way too long. For example, I have a very important business client with whom O communicate a lot. I mean, I trade probably 100 emails with him in an average month. Probably 75% of those emails contain information that is important enough that I save those emails. Problem is that if 6 months from now he emails me about something that we talked about today, I have thousands of emails to dig through to find the one that I need. I have resorted on GMail to having multiple tags for this client, based on his name and the subject matter. With Evernote, it is all just much easier to find the actual email that I need very quickly. Anyway, when I started coming to the realization of needing a much more efficient way of data storage and especially retrieval, I started thinking about Evernote again, after a short stint using it a couple years back.
I went to YouTube and started watching tutorial type videos about Evernote. The first thing that I did was that I was searching for videos comparing Evernote vs. OneNote. OneNote is Microsoft’s note-taking a product, which is now free (their response to Evernote raising prices). I had recently become anti-Evernote because of the price structure change and the requiring of premium accounts to use important features. But, after I watched some videos, I quickly decided that Evernote was so superior to OneNote that it was well worth the small amount of money required to use the features that I want and need.
While watching the tutorial videos I made an important find. I came across several videos from a guy named Steve Dotto. From everything I have learned about Steve in the past few days, it seems that Steve is the Canadian version of Leo Laporte. Steve is into all kinds of tech stuff, but Evernote seems to be one of the key things that he promotes and teaches about. Steve has an excellent YouTube channel called DottoTech. Since back in the 90s, Steve hosted a tech TV show in Canada, seemingly much like what Leo used to do in the States (and Leo had a Canadian show too). Well, sometime in the past 10 years or so (I think 2008 or so, but I forget) Steve left the TV thing and went 100% on YouTube and his own website. I love the guy, he is very good at explaining stuff, and his videos are first class. On the DottoTech YouTube channel, they have an entire section of Evernote training videos, which I highly recommend.
Some Videos for you to check out
Of course, there are other people teaching Evernote on YouTube, but I think that Dotto is far and away the best.
Here are some particular topics/videos that I think are important to look at if you are thinking of using Evernote:
I think is well worth watching for somebody who is thinking of starting with Evernote, although it is about 3 years old, is Steve listing out his 5 favorite features of Evernote. Watch it below:
Evernote has something called the “Web Clipper” where you can save entire web pages (or portions of the page) to your Evernote account for easy retrieval later. Very useful. Find out more about it in the video below.
Evernote has a software app called “Scannable” which is only for iOS. Fortunately, they have now rolled out many of the Scannable features into the Evernote Android version, though. Watch the video below to learn why having a Smartphone and Evernote will be a great tool while you are out and about.
If you think that the Evernote new pricing policy is a problem, the video below convinced me to go for it. Remember, Evernote still has a free plan, but I think that the features available on the paid plans are very important, so you might want to consider that.
If you think you might be interested in using OneNote instead of using Evernote, you might want to look at this video:
Those videos will get you started on Evernote. Of course, I am just a newbie with it, so maybe there are better resources, but this is some of the best stuff that I have found.
Evernote seems so huge that it is intimidating. But, it is also very intuitive. I believe that by watching a few videos like those above you will have the ability to install Evernote and start working immediately. The rest you can learn as you go.. in my opinion anyway.
I hope this is helpful to you. Good luck and happy increased productivity!
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