I literally didn’t cook some recipes because I couldn’t find them even though I knew I had them, somewhere.Īs you can see, I was spending a great deal of time and energy just trying to find things. If I was cooking dinner one night and needed a recipe it was either in our paper recipe file, in some cookbook, on some sheet of paper in some cookbook, bookmarked in my browser or in my email.Login credentials would either be in my email or in some local file on my hard drive.Of course if it was, it wasn’t in order so I had to manually search for it. If I needed a receipt, hopefully I kept it and put it in my file cabinet.
If my kids needed birth certificates or social security cards those were in the file cabinet.One of the big problems I had was remembering where each bit of information was located. I basically had important data all over the place and much of it not accessible when I wasn’t home.
Before using Evernote, I had data on my local hard drive, data in email, data in Google Docs, data in post it notes on my desk, in paper notebooks on my desk, and in file cabinets full of folders and paper … well you get the picture. I don’t have to think about where my data is, I just open Evernote on my MacBook, or my iPhone/iPad or via a web browser, search and I find what I need. When I say data, I mean everything, text, images, binaries, and PDFs. Evernote allows you to place all of your data in one place and provides access that data from anywhere at anytime. I’m all about simplicity and less is more, which is the main reason Evernote works so well for me. But, before I go there, let me explain what it is about Evernote that makes it unique. I’ve been engaged in a number of recent discussions related to Evernote out on Google+ and in doing so I realized that while I’ve said I use Evernote, I’ve really never captured exactly how I use Evernote for blogging.
I’ve been using Evernote since then and not only for personal life, but for my blogging business as well. I could suddenly find things, my desk was cleaner and I was more organized. Any and all paper I needed to retain (I scanned it)īasically any bit of information that I needed to retain for more than an hour or so, I recorded in Evernote.The second time around, I decided to put everything in my life I possibly could in Evernote. Fortunately after reading some Evernote tips articles, I tried it again. In hindsight, I know why – I wasn’t using Evernote correctly. A month or so later, I all but stopped using it. Based on my oldest Evernote note, I began using Evernote early in 2008, mostly to keep text notes. I don’t recall exactly how I found Evernote, but I do recall not being real impressed with it at first.