Fanatics of Evernote understand this: The power of Evernote is in its flexibility to be configured to support any workflow you desire. However, this can be a double edged sword. For many users, this flexibility presents a challenge. They get stuck on how to “properly' organize Evernote.

Evernote Business can be used as a lightweight project planning and tracking tool, but it also shines when used alongside your organization’s platform of choice. Together, Evernote and leading project management software form a complete solution for keeping your team informed, connected, and productive. In this episode, I show you how I manage projects using a template I created in Evernote. Find out more about my latest online course: The Ultimate Guide To Planning Goals More Information: https. By having all of your project management, all of your needs in one place, you leave room for focus, clarity, and just an ease of life flow. I discovered Evernote in 2009. I was just in the throes of my new business and needed a way to organize my mind. Evernote was a great place to store those thoughts, ideas, and projections. Others use Evernote as a tasks and project management tool. Jeff Torgerson, a project manager at Sonos, describes in detail how he uses Evernote in his daily routine, with notebooks dedicated to tasks that are: due today, this week, upcoming, waiting for, and archived. He uses tags to link notes to projects and notes for reviewing his work at. Hi I am a big fan of evernote for capturing notes on the move and then making it available across devices. It can be very useful for a project. However, caution is required as most organisations will not want their data stored and shared on a 3rd.

In my work as a consultant specializing in Evernote workflow deployment and training, I’ve observed that what people want to accomplish with Evernote falls into one of three categories:

1. Reference/digital storage

2. Project management

3. Process management

Here is how I define each category:

Reference/Digital Storage

This bucket is how most people initially get introduced to Evernote. For many, it is all they rely on Evernote for. Evernote superior capture abilities and features beyond typing notes [for example - the web clipper, audio recording, ability to add pictures and attachments to notes, note creation via email forwarding, and tools like Scannable and 3rd party apps like FileThis] paired with Evernote's outstanding search features, such as hand writing recognition in search - are often cited as reasons users fall in love with Evernote for storage and reference use. Common Evernote use cases that fit in this category include:

• Note taking

• Recipe storage

• Storage of household items like scanned user manuals for the dishwasher

• List making

Project Management

Projects have a beginning and an end. Evernote can be a support to project management as it is flexible and can be deployed to support any project management use case. This flexility of Evernote though is also a challenge for some - many see it as a blank slate and they don’t know how to organize and utilize it for effective project management without guidance. Since it is not a structured system [by design], you effective project management in Evernote includes defining processes and deploying templates that support the project, and maximizing Evernote features such as shared notebooks, pinned notes, and tables to organize your project. And, the flexility of Evernote allows you to mold it to support whatever project you are trying to manage. Examples of typical projects that Evernote is excellent for managing include:

• Travel management

• Internal business project management [website redesign, office expansions, hiring, etc.]

• Client work

Process Management

Process management is focused on executing a repetitive sequence of tasks. Evernote is an excellent process manager and is especially powerful in supporting processes that are touched by multiple team members. Here again, Evernote is not a structured process manager out of the gate, but the flexility of Evernote allows you set up and manage any process your organization faces and customize it to the nuances of your organization. Many of the same features that support effective project management in Evernote are also used in effective process management in Evernote. Use cases for process management in Evernote include:

• Meetings with team members, vendors and clients

• Financial and receipt management

• Lead and sales management

• Order and transaction management

• Social media management

The power of Evernote is the ability for it to manage workflows and use cases from all three of the categories simultaneously, in the same tool.

And I have a theory. When you use Evernote to manage workflows in two or three of the categories, you are an Evernote addict. You can’t imagine what software you would turn to to replace all that Evernote does for you. You think Evernote is the best thing since sliced bread, and you sing its praises to everyone you know. This represents the fanatical group of Evernote devotees that I am a proud part of.

However, when you use Evernote for just one of these buckets, you are more at risk to criticize and abandon the platform. You are more vulnerable to becoming disgruntled if Evernote doesn’t perform as best-in-class in the silo area you use it for. And understandably so. If you look at each of the three buckets as a stand alone software role, there is certainly growing and stiff competition in each of them. However, I have yet to find another software that replaces the ability to manage all three buckets in one interface, and additionally offers the mobility access, search features, collaboration tools, and affordability that Evernote has. And, I love being able to manage reference material, projects, and processes, all in one place. It has transformed how I work and my elevated my level of productivity.

But, back to the point of this post. Understanding that there are three main buckets of workflows, provides a helpful foundation when answering the question: What is the best way to organize Evernote?

My Process for Determining Evernote Organization

Following is a process I often walk through with clients in defining the organizational structure of their Evernote account.

Step 1

Start with identifying which bucket your workflow falls into: Reference, Process, or Project.

Step 2

Based on your workflow category, Identify what notebook, or notebooks, should be created. Start with one, and expand if necessary.

If you are using Evernote for a storage or reference function, often one notebook for the category of reference material is sufficient. For example, create a notebook for Insurance records, or for recipes, or for business legal documents.

However, if you are tracking a process, you can create one notebook per process stage. For example, i have three notebooks that manage my blogging process:

• Blog - Post Ideas

• Blog - Posts

• Blog - Post Promotion

As a blog idea moves from concept to a full blog post it gets “promoted” from the Blog - Post Ideas notebook into its own note in the Blog - Posts notebook. From there, I draft my full blog post before moving it to my website platform. Once it is posted, the Blog - Post Promotion notebook manages the next stage of the blogging process, the promotion of the post on social channels. Each notebook represents a distinct phase of work related to my blogging process.

If you are using Evernote to manage a project, say, client work, create [at the minimum] one notebook to manage that client project. However, several notebooks may be needed for a client project.

Step 3

Give consideration to the naming convention of your workflow notebooks, particularly if they are going to be used in a collaborative environment. It is helpful to group notebooks related to a particular project, process, or reference category together and this can be done via naming conventions. My post on Gaming the Naming helps to explain this in detail. You can also group notebooks into stacks. Stacks do not replace the need for naming conventions on your notebooks however as stacks are a user preference and can’t be shared with others.

Step 4

Consider the naming conventions of the notes that you keep in the notebooks you have created. Again, using a naming convention is very important in 1) grouping like information together during an alphabetical sort of the notes that are in the notebook, 2) in creating meaningful summary notes using note links [see tip #5 here] and 3) in creating powerful searches that will retrieve the exact notes you are looking for.

Step 5

Determine if you need any templates, summary notes, or dashboard notes to provide navigation and an orientation to the information stored in the notebook. Use non-dated reminders to pin these summary notes to the top of your notebook for easy access by you and anyone you share the notebook with.

Step 6

Decide if tags are needed as part of your workflow design process. Read this article before deciding to assign copious amounts of tags to your notes.

Step 7

Determine if grouping notebooks into stacks will be helpful to the organization of your Evernote account. If so, remember the value of naming conventions in ordering your stacks and notebooks as I detail here.

These 7 steps provide the framework for creating organization in Evernote. Each type of workflow will influence a different organizational structure in Evernote. The basics have been described here but there is an art to designing the perfect workflow and organization in Evernote that meets your need.

There is a lot to consider and, admittedly, some people can feel overwhelmed by the idea of setting it up. But I know that following these steps can improve your organization by 100%.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Does this help you in thinking about your Evernote organization? Do you agree with my organizational approach? If not, how do you approach it?

Every morning, as I prepare for my day, I sit down at my iMac and launch my most critical apps. I use the native Mac Mail for email. Nozbe for managing my tasks. Fantastical 2.0 is my current calendar of choice and all my AutoCAD drawing files are safely backed up and accessible on Dropbox. Each app helps me stay productive whether I am in the studio or on the road.

And then there’s Evernote.

I’ve been using Evernote for a few years now and it has slowly become my most useful tool. Evernote collects all my thoughts and ideas. It organizes my personal life, life at my architecture firm Fivecat Studio and here at EntreArchitect. Together with my Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanner, Evernote now stores all my most important documents.

I haven’t opened a metal file cabinet in over a year.

In my never-ending quest to find the most effective and efficient business systems for architects, I recently started to integrate Evernote into my project management system at Fivecat Studio. Since moving to the virtual studio business model for my firm, I’ve been using Dropbox for storage of all my drawings and projects documents. It works well. I have all the capacity I need and with a proper naming system, everything is relatively easy to find.

I’ve read about other architects using Evernote successful, so I wanted to give it a try.

I first tested Evernote with two project to see how it worked. I created a new “notebook” using the same project name and number system that I use in Dropbox and have been using at the studio for over a decade. The main project notebook is named simply with the project number followed by the project name; 15-001 Project Name. When sorting, the projects arrange in numerical order at at the top of all my other notebooks.

Evernote has a great feature that allows us to “stack” a series of notebooks inside one other notebook. Unfortunately we can only stack one layer deep, but that does force us to keep the system simple. Inside my main project notebook, named 15-001 in the example below, are five other notebooks; 15-001 Correspondence, 15-001 Drawings, 15-001 Field Reports, 15-001 Meeting Minutes and 15-001 Proposal. The content of each notebook is self explanatory and you can add as many notebooks as you want. My recommendation with any new system, is to keep it simple. Too many notebooks will make the system cumbersome and complicated to use.

The best part of Evernote and what makes it so powerful is the search tool. Rather than sorting through individual notes for that one field report from 8 months ago, a simple search of the project name and a few key terms relevant to the document will pop up just the report we are seeking. That makes project management, quick, simple, efficient and effective.

Documents do not need to be written in native Evernote note format. Evernote lets us store many different formats, including MS Word, Excel, PDF and most image files. I save most of my documents as PDFs. My ScanSnap Scanner allows me to scan using text recognition, so everything I file is fully searchable; even receipts and business cards.

I have discovered, as with all my productivity systems, that less is more. Keep it simple and straight forward. As digital tools evolve and search tools are perfected, we will soon be dumping every file into one big bucket and reclaiming it with one simple search.

Using Evernote For Project Management Process

All my CAD files will remain in Dropbox, but I am slowly moving all my projects to Evernote. It works for me and everyday I am learning new ways to use this amazing tool.

Using Evernote For Project Management

Question: Do you use Evernote? Share some ways that this tool is making your life easier.