I’ve been using Evernote now for nearly 3 years and I love it. I’m completely dependant on it, it’s my digital drug and I couldn’t image my world without it.
Over this period I’ve introduced many friends and colleagues to this wonderful world, and I always get a polarised reaction. They either
Get it, jump straight in, and never look back. Quickly reaching the point where like me they wonder what they did before they got Evernote.
Don’t get it, don’t see the point of it, and never bother with it again
As most of the people I introduced were individuals who are highly IT literate, and hold “office” jobs, I was certain that they would love Evernote. Understand my dismay when the majority of them didn’t get it.
I couldn’t understand it, they were people who could benefit massively, yet they couldn’t see how it would be of any use to them.
I then began to ask why they wouldn’t find it useful. The responses typically revolved around seeing it as just another way to organise files on your computer, and most of these people were already using a very well defined folder structure on their computer. While this is one potential use for Evernote, it can be used for so much more.
In my opinion the real power of Evernote lies in how it enables you to search not only the document title, document tag, but also the content. This has saved me hours of hunting around documents trying to find the document that I wrote for x, but used a title that made sense at the time, but now is now a complete mystery to me 12 months later.
A couple of examples of the sort of things that you can do with Evernote are
Paperless office applications
Rather than printing that invoice, and sticking it in a filing cabinet. Email the PDF to evernote, and store it in a digital filing cabinet thats far easier to search and retrieve documents. Whats more this information is now available, on my work PC, my personal Mac Book, iPhone, iPad. This all works seamlessly and saves me loads of time, as I also print all my customer invoices to PDF and save them in Evernote. So when my clients say that they haven’t got the invoice (I’m sure we’ve all heard that excuse for not paying a bill before), I can fire up whatever device I have to hand, and send the email in seconds.
Storing Instructions booklets
Fed up of never being able to find the instructions for your TV, Fridge, Freezer, Sky box etc, as lets face it you only ever need them when something goes wrong. Scan them into evernote and ditch the papercopies.
I also do the same for warranty cards and other product specific info, that used to end up in a kitchen draw, and eventually get lost.
Software serial numbers
Fed up of losing serial numbers for software that I’d installed, I started using evernote to keep all this information, so that when I had to rebuild my computer, I had all of the serial numbers to hand.
Research Articles
A really neat feature of Evernote is the web clipper. When I see a webpage that I think will be useful, I clip it to evernote and hey presto I have now got a permanent record of the webpage, it’s URL and links. Whats better is if the page becomes unavailable because the site is removed or changed I’ve still got the content which I found of interest.
I find this invaluable for taking How to guides, or news articles that I know will be useful in the future. I no longer have to try to remember how I found them in the first place, just type a few key words into evernote and up pops the article or guide. Brilliant.
Snapshots of Documents
I have to admit that I’m not great at renaming documents when I make changes, as such I occasionally overwrite a “snapshot” of a document. This can be critical if I am talking to a client and want to see the same spreadsheet that they had. By adding my evernote account as a bcc on the email that I sent to the client, I now have a backed up copy of every version of every spreadsheet or document that I have sent to the client.
Signing of Contracts
I use softsign, which is an app on the ipad, to finalise my contracts. It gives me a very simple tool, which allows me to capture a digital signature and then finalise the contract and keep a snapshot at that point. Further it also allows me to distribute the copy in seconds, which mean that my clients get a signed copy of the contract, within minutes of me leaving their offices, which rarely fails to impress.
You can find out more details at
www.softsignltd.com
There are loads more uses and people find new and inventive ways in which to use Evernote daily. That is essentially it’s power. It is as flexible as you want it to be.
So whats holding you back, go to their website and open an account today. Invest the time in learning what Evernote can do for you, and in no time at all you will wonder how you lived without it.