I’ve been using Evernote, and taking it seriously, for over 2 years now. It’s my go-to app for note taking, long term projects, and goal setting. Quite honestly, it took me a while to figure out how to make it work for me but it’s now become a staple in my work flow.
I think this is most useful for an intermediate user. I started using it when I was having a tough time finding things in my notebooks because the notes started to accumulate. I knew I needed a system to find things quicker. So I created a Table of Contents for every active notebook I have. The main goal of the TOC is to have a go-to document with things to other notes within those notebooks. I’ve labeled each TOC “01 Table of Contents” so that it will always remain at the top so long as my notes are sorted by title.
Screenshot of my TOC
Within each TOC I use note links so that I can navigate to each note quickly. I’ll also organize the links into categories so It’s also easy for me to find within the TOC. I’ll prioritize the notes that need my attention this week. I’ll put other categories below that so that goals and projects aren’t out of sight, out of mind.
I’ve found that the TOC helps me keep my long term goals at the forefront of each week so I don’t get side tracked. The only thing is, I have to remember to open, organize, and look at the TOC every week. So I put a daily reminder in Todoist to open it up. I know it may seem redundant to some, but it’s the only way it works for me lol!
Do you have a workflow that works for you? I would love to hear how you have yours set up to improve my own!
Welcome to my 3rd and final post in my Goal Setting Series. I’m so glad that I was able to share this with you! It’s not only giving me an opportunity to put my thoughts somewhere but I’m really hoping that my thought process and workflow will help someone out there.
I was originally going to write a lengthy post about how I’m going to make a few tweaks on how I plan to use Evernote and Todoist, but I decided that instead I would doing a YouTube video about it. I think sometimes it’s just easier to walk through it and for you to visually see it than for me to take a bunch of screen shots and type it all out.
This year I went all in on my productivity. A big goal of mine this year was to get more organized and to get my good friend and assistant, Katie, on the same page. The ability to have the information at my fingertips, available on multiple devices, and available to her was the main reason why I needed to invest in my productivity. I wanted these apps to help us work smarter!
There are 4 main things that keep me and productive and organized – my planner, iCal, Evernote, and Todoist. So let’s go over it in order.
This year I utilized the Happy Planner system and really loved it! I learned a lot about how I need both analog and digital elements to work together to keep my life in order. After using the system for about a year I found my groove with it and figured out how to make it work with everything else in my productivity system. I’ll be sharing my new Happy Planner set up soon so make sure you stay tuned for that! 🙂
The next thing I use to keep myself organized is iCal. iCal is key to keep me on track of my day because I get side tracked really really quickly. As an entrepreneur, I can get pulled in a million different directions at once so I utilize iCal’s notifications feature to notify me when I need to stop what I’m doing and move on to the next thing. I also utilize the travel time feature because I’m notoriously late almost all the time! Yikes, it’s embarrassing to admit! So I input the addresses into my meetings and events so I’ll get a notification when I need to leave to minimize my tardiness. It helps a lot!
Finally, the last 2 items that I’ve implemented into my workflow that has changed.everything.
For long term goals, like yearly or quarterly goals, I use Evernote. If you’ve watched my Evernote videos you’ll see that I mainly use it for long term goals, traveling, anything that needs more of a journaling set up. Take notes? Evernote. Need to create a timeline? Evernote. Have a list of articles I want to read on my down time? Evernote. Planning events? Evernote. It took me a while to get into Evernote because it was so versatile I didn’t even know where to start. If you’ve seen my YouTube tutorial on how I set up my Evernote this was my starting point. I’ve kind of tweaked it just a little bit since then and I’ll be making a follow up video soon so you can see my set up for 2018. Stay tuned for that too!
A few things I’ve learned while using Evernote non-stop this year is:
The notebook set up I used in my Youtube video worked really well for me
The Inbox set up I used changed the game. Thanks to the other fellow Evernote users for the inspiration!
Creating templates in Evernote was a pain at first, but made my life so much easier in the long run
Finally, Todoist is what I decided to use for my short term goals. Trust me guys, I’ve tried almost all of them. But Todoist is by far the best task manager for me. In the video below, I share with you on how I set up my Todoist account.
A couple things I’ve learned this past year about Todoist:
If you categorize your tasks as soon as I input them instead of using the inbox feature I can keep things much more organized.
Keyboard short cuts saved my life
Utilize that recurring task feature, trust!
The today view is my best friend
I’ve given myself a year with the system above and my productivity has increased 10x over! There is still more that can be done and there are still ways I can improve my system (if only these apps could read my mind! ok, that would be overboard and way too scary!) but all-in-all I can safely say that this year has been my most productive ever and that’s thanks to the system I invested in.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, these apps aren’t going to change your life overnight. It’s almost like cleaning out your closet – things will get a lot worse before they get better. But sit tight and ride out the storm because when the clouds clear and you have everything in place you’ll do a happy dance!
