7 Best Evernote Notebooks for You — Keep Your Productivity Afloat
Evernote has a memory of an elephant
Over the years, I have switched between various online storage tools a dozen times.
The following three services now meet 99% of my needs:
- Things 3 for managing my tasks and to-do lists.
- Google Drive for my document repository.
- Evernote for capturing and organizing everything.
Several months ago, I considered leaving Evernote. Ian Small is leading Evernote to achieve a masterpiece under his leadership. Despite Evernote's popularity, the past five years have been difficult for the company, both structurally and personally.
However, the company has been making innovative upgrades and enhancements since 2020 to solidify its role as the leading note-taking service.
What makes me love Evernote?
I started using Evernote in 2008, initiated with a blank slate, played with it, and learned a little about it. There was a period during which I did not use this, but I returned to it thereafter.
I became enamored with Evernote as I read various blogs, watched a few youtube videos, and understood the vision of its founder Stepan Pachikov.
I organize my life into several notebooks containing tens of thousands of notes.
I have adopted Evernote to organize my goals, keep track of my important data, and preserve articles I want to read later.
The power of the Evernote system became evident to me once I realized how I could easily manage and track all of my information.
I am organizing Evernote with these seven notebooks.
These seven must-have notebooks in Evernote are the building blocks I use to organize my essential information.
You can store about anything in Evernote, so feel free to add to this list indefinitely.
1. Big Picture Planning.
Considering I have many dreams, ideas, and plans for the future, I am pretty ambitious.
Tossing out these ideas used to be my habit.
At the moment, I use Evernote to organize my long-term goals, daily rituals, and upcoming projects.
2. Brainstorming Sessions.
Every new idea requires a brainstorming session, no matter what line of work you're in or your goals.
I record my brainstorming notes into a new message in my "Brainstorming" notebook.
Soon after, I transferred tasks to Things 3 (my task manager) and copied other vital ideas to the relevant project notebook in Evernote.
3. Read Later.
I review all the newsletters and articles from Tiago Forte I captured in the previous seven days each week.
I have a notebook called "Inbox," where all my new articles reside. In addition, the Evernote Web Clipper in Chrome allows me to quickly transfer articles into Evernote for later reading.
Additionally, I subscribe to newsletters using my Evernote email address (located under Settings). I receive my newsletters in Evernote's Inbox, my default notebook.
4. Meeting Notes.
Evernote is my go-to note-taking app.
The Evernote app for iPad makes it easy to take meeting notes, sync them with Wi-Fi when you're close to a network, and process them later.
Put a reminder in your task management system to process your notes, identify essential tasks, and disregard all the rest.
Taking notes does not mean much if you do not read them later (I know this from years of wasted note-taking).
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5. Previously Accomplished Projects.
An Evernote notebook I created for last year's accomplishments was one of the first notebooks I made.
The purpose of this list was to help me review my accomplishments and remind myself that I am still on track to being a high achiever. So I recommend you create a new note for each year of your life going back as far as you can remember.
Record the great things you accomplished, trips you went on, new experiences that changed your life, or any other significant personal victory.
It will surprise you how much self-confidence you can gain from making a list like this, as it provides some perspective for setting new goals in the future and boosting your self-esteem.
6. Using Templates.
Emails that sound and look the same from different people come into my inbox frequently. As a result, I created a notebook with email templates, using them as frameworks.
If you're writing a blog post or starting a new project, using a template can save you time and energy.
7. Personal Records.
My notes contain essential information I only look at once a year, such as medical history records, addresses of homes I have lived in, employment histories, books to read, and even critical financial data.
The process requires a bit of trust in the Evernote system.
Evernote and Google Drive are tied together, so I ensure that the data is retained between the two.
Final Thoughts.
Hundreds and thousands of apps are available to bring productivity and efficiency.
It's easy to spend time browsing all of them and stay unproductive. But, the key is to use our prudence in the selection, adopt a workflow and trust the system.
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