One of the most frequently-asked questions I get in my capacity as Evernote’s Ambassador for Paperless Lifestyle is how I organize my notebooks and tags in Evernote. Back in January, I wrote in some detail about how I organize my notes. I also provided an annotation of my tags and notebook structure. The short answer to the question is pretty simple:

I try to use the fewest tags and notebooks I can get away with. Instead, I depend upon Evernote’s substantial search capabilities.

There are several reasons I work this way:

1. Tagging and filing notes takes time. I want to get the note into Evernote as quickly as I can and be able to find it equally fast.
2. An elaborate tagging and notebook structure has to be maintained. Tags can grow like weeds, and like any garden, the weeds must be pulled–and that takes time.
3. Too many tags and notebook can lead to ambiguities. Do I file this in my Filing Cabinet notebook or my Business notebook? Do I tag this note as “confirmation” or “receipt” (or both)? Too many ambiguities make it hard to file notes, as well as hard to find them.
4. Evernote has very powerful search capabilities that make an elaborate tagging and notebook structure unnecessary for me.

I’ve covered some of this territory before, so I thought I’d use today’s post to describe how I think about searching in Evernote, and how that informs how I tag and organize my notes.

All of my searches fall into 4 categories

When I look at the searches I do in Evernote, I find that they fall into 4 familiar categories:

1. Who?
2. What?
3. When?
4. Where?

This can be better illustrated as follows:

When searching for something in Evernote I almost always think in terms of Who, What, When, and Where.  These don’t refer to the form of the question but how I go about doing the search. “What” means that I have an idea of what I am searching for (“DMV registration notice”). “When” means I have an idea of the time frame I want to search (last month, in February 2012). “Where” means I have an idea of where the note was created (“Castine, Maine”). “Who” means I have an idea who the note is related to.

Note that in the above diagram, almost all of these questions can be answered by attributes of a note that already exists. For instance, when I’m searching for the “what” (e.g. “DMV Registration Renewal Notice”) I can search the note title, or within an attachment in the note.

In searching for “when?” I can use the note date attributes. I can search by note creation date, updated date, or even reminder date. For documents that I scan into Evernote, I set the note creation date to the date on the document so that I get more accurate search results. (If the bank statement is dated September 30, 2013, I change the note create date to 9/30/2013¹ once the statement has been scanned in.)

If I am searching by location (“Where did I park the car in airport parking garage?”) I can use the Location features in Evernote to locate the note. For instance, I can open the Atlas and look for any notes created in a certain region.

Searching for “who?” is the trickiest, and this is where I will use tags (sparingly). If a note or document is specific to a person (usually a family member) I will tag the note with the person’s name. This allows me to find notes for me, or Kelly or the kids.

The search categories can work in combination

Of course, I often have to search in more than one category to find what I am looking for. The four categories can overlap in 13 ways that look something like this:

One nice thing about this diagram is that is just happens to represent the relative frequency that the more complex searches occur.  Searches labeled 1-4 are not complex at all. I am searching just one element, and given the size of these, they are the most common searches that I do.

Searches labeled 5-8 are more complex. They involve an intersection of two searches: What and Who, or Who and Where, or What and When. For instance, rather than searching for the “DMV registration renewal” I might want a specific renewal, so I might search for Jamie’s DMV registration renewal (using a tag for my name and a text search for the rest).

Searches 9-12 involve three elements and I almost never need to search at this level of complexity. And search 13 involves all four elements, Who, What, When, and Where. I don’t think I’ve ever needed a search this complex.

Virtually all of these searches, simple or complex, use existing attributes of the note. The only time tags come in really handy is when I am looking for the “who” since I tag my notes with family members names. Tags also come in handy when searching for lists of related notes.

With this search methodology I can usually find what I am looking for, without elaborate tagging, using the built-in attributes of a note. And I can usually find it within a few seconds. Because of this, I have no need for an elaborate tag or notebook framework. It adds overhead that I don’t need and wouldn’t make use of if I had it.

I understand that not everyone works this way, but I thought I’d share how I think about searching because it informs how I use Evernote in my efforts to go paperless.

If you have a suggestion for a future Going Paperless post, let know me. Send it to me at feedback [at] jamietoddrubin.com. As always, this post and all of my Going Paperless posts is also available on Pinterest.

Last week’s post: Quick Tip: Capturing Meme Quiz Results in Evernote