Revamping my Evernote. Why?
- I had too many tags (over 1,000)
- Too many notebooks (around 60)
- Too many “todo’s” scattered across 1 ToDo notebook and 1 ToDo tag (what the…?)
- Notes piling up unattended to in my inbox and ToDo tag and notebook
- Not doing regular daily, weekly and monthly reviews.
- Mission creep was affecting my original purpose for using Evernote.
- My original purpose was to use EN as
- an archive of ideas for the future, as well as reference materials for present and possible future projects, and
- my GTD system.
- My original purpose was to use EN as
- BUT I was spending too much time collecting notes and clippings, and not enough time reviewing them and/or using them for live projects.
- Too many ToDos and ToReads and Someday/Maybes piling up.
- Why? Probably because these items do not pop up on my radar screen when they should, or as often as they should.
- Why not?
- Probably partly because I’m not conducting regular Daily and Weekly Reviews.
- Too many clippings.
- Too many notebooks, meaning too much time spent deciding which notebook to file a note under.
- Too many occasions when I was unable to locate the note I wanted because I could not search across multiple notebooks (but you can search across multiple tags).
- Storing too much and not trashing enough, i.e. not reviewing old clippings or other notes and discarding things I no longer need. Being too much of a packrat, in short.
- Lost track of my projects: too many items labelled as “projects” which weren’t.
- Solution: review David Allen’s definition of “project”, and re-label my “projects” which aren’t really projects (actions that require more than 2 steps).
- Lost track of my long-term goals, visions, etc.; my 30-, 40- and 50,000-feet perspectives.
- Possible solution: regular reviews (Daily, Weekly, Monthly)
- This means that my long-term goals and visions, etc., need to come up on my radar on a regular basis, in one or more of my reviews.
- That means organizing my saved searches.
I decided to re-read Ruud Hein’s article on using Evernote to GTD, where he describes in detail his extensive use of saved searches to make sure what needs to come up does actually come up. That is (for me) the biggest lesson of GTD: something important you must take to work the next day, you put it on your shoes or right in front of the front door, so next morning when you’re still bleary and fuzzy despite your coffee, you stumble over this and think, “What the heck? … Oh yeah, I gotta take this to work” and you pick it up and take it. Read the rest of this entry »