Evernote has long been a part of my productivity gestalt. It’s incredibly versatile; even as it evolves under different leadership, I still find myself looking into how I can leverage it more.
But I don’t necessarily want to reinvent the wheel when I try to do that.
That’s why I check out what other Evernote users are doing across the Internet and see if I can make use of what they’ve put in place. Sometimes I find better ways to do what I’m already doing, while sometimes I find ways to use Evernote that I’ve never tried before.
Below are 5 of the best ways I’ve found to use Evernote that I’ve not yet tried myself (but now plan to).
1. A Book List
One of the ways Evernote Essentials author Brett Kelly uses Evernote is for building and updating a book list. Brett gets a lot of book recommendations and wants a system that will allow him to quickly build and update a book list. Together with the iPhone app Workflow, Brett uses Evernote to simplify the process.
Why I’m Going to Use This: I’m going to give this a go because I’d like to start to keep a commonplace book in Evernote for reading better going forward. This use case seems like a great place to start.
2. Organizing Your Life
Nancy Messieh uses Evernote templates to organize her life. She offers 6 template ideas here that will help you build templates for tracking your to-do lists, logging your expenses, tracking meetings, and project management. If you’ve ever wanted to get more out of Evernote with templates, Nancy’s resource is a great place to start.
Why I’m Going to Use This: I’ve never used Evernote templates before. It’s time that I start. Who knows? Maybe I can build some that can be used easily with TimeCrafting.
3. Genealogical Research
Cyndi Ingle uses Evernote for genealogical research. Her website also has tons of resources for those who want to use Evernote in searching for their own family history. This link offers up a ton of links that she’s compiled (and written herself) that will help you use Evernote for your own genealogy project.
Why I’m Going to Use This: After spending time watching and listening to A.J. Jacobs dive deeper into genealogy in recent years (and in my quest to find out if I’m related to UK footballer Jamie Vardy), I think Evernote presents a great platform for this kind of research. I’m already using it for other types of research anyway, so why not give this a try?
4. Creating an Online Magazine
Darren Tong and his partner Bojan Djordjevic use Evernote to create their online magazine Alpha Efficiency. They used shared notebooks a lot, but one particular feature that proved to be very useful was the “Evernote voicemails” – essentially audio files in notes. They use the audio feature in notes to leave comments for each other. Darren also uses it to create audio notes for himself when brainstorming.
Why I’m Going to Use This: I’m not sure if this is something I’m going to try right away, but it’s good to know it can be done. I may find a way to make this work for Productivityist. I just need to find the right angle.
5. Organizing Blog Post Ideas
Michael Hyatt has been a longtime Evernote user, and one of the ways he uses it is to organize his blog post ideas. He has a rather unconventional way of doing it:
“I don’t use a lot of notebooks. Instead, I rely on tags. I have found this system to be much more versatile.” – Michael Hyatt
Michael uses more tags than notebooks because tags are virtually unlimited, notes can have multiple tags, and tags can be nested into multiple hierarchies.
Why I’m Going to Use This: I already do this a little bit with my Evernote Spark File. But I think it could be done better. If anything, I’m going to look at what Michael has done here and refine my Evernote process around my blog ideas. We’ll see what sticks and what doesn’t.
Are you going to give any of these a try? What ways have you been using Evernote that are perhaps a bit unconventional but work well for you? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to see what you’ve got.
