My best friend throughout my pursuit of three college degrees, other than my wife, was a pack of 3×5 note cards. My habit was to make notes in every class of key take-aways, quotes and facts to memorize. I always had a pack of cards in my pocket.
I also used 3×5 note cards to make notes from books I’ve read throughout the years and I’ve read a LOT of business books. I would re-read my note cards and found that my take-aways began to accumulate and my knowledge went from my head to my heart. Take-aways became talking points.
I still have the cards somewhere packed away in a box in my garage. I wish I could find them and read every one of them. I wrote note cards for over 35 years. I was never very good at counting jellybeans in a jar at the county fair, but as I try to estimate my card count, I settle on a number somewhere in excess of 50,000 cards. I wish I could access them quickly and easily.
A few years ago, I discovered Evernote. It was the first app I added to my first iPhone. I made a few notes and uploaded business cards and pictures. I even used the little elephant (Evernote webclipper) in my browser to cut and paste screen shots into my notes.
Unfortunately, I downloaded many other note apps. My favorite of all, and I think I tested most of the note apps is SimpleNote. The name says it all. I use it every day in many different ways.
But it’s not Evernote.
I recently re-discovered Evernote. I read a couple of E-books which helped me to see new ways to employ the tool. I could be so much further down the road to note taking and most importantly, note retrieval had I been disciplined enough to use the power of Evernote.
What would happen if you made only 5 notes a day, every day for 5 years? Your Evernote library would be holding (assuming a Professional Upgrade) over 9,000 notes. Access to each note would be simple, fast and reliable. Ulitmately, this is what re-sold me on Evernote…my notes on everything, available forever.
Searching a note file is much better that searching a big box for a notecard.
3 Comments
Thanks for sharing, Dr. Greene. I too, rediscovered Evernote a few years ago after my initial discovery. Originally, I didn’t think I had enough notes to make Evernote worthwhile. But once I changed my mindset to realize everything is a note (and that notes don’t have to be pretty), my note-taking world opened up.
Now I am constantly making notes. Not caring whether they make sense or if they’re complete because the search tool is so powerful. One of my favorite features is the ability to scan PDFs into Evernote and then search them. Now all of my bills, records and statements go directly into Evernote. It’s way more organized than my filing cabinet and takes up much less space.
Great comment and helpful! Thanks for reading and sharing.
I recently fell in love with Evernote! I love that I can have it on both of my computers, my ipad, and my iphone, so I never have to remember to add a note later, it is always with me. I love that I can forward it e-mails and organize them into the notebooks I want them in without much hassle or effort. This is truly a powerful organizational tool!