Category: software

A few weeks ago, I mentioned how my regularly scheduled Going Paperless posts were coming to an end, but that I’d continue to write posts off-schedule, as I had time and found something worth posting. I thought I’d start with a series of “index” posts that collect some of the articles I’ve written into categories. And since I am asked about organization more often than just about any other topic, I’ll start with the posts I’ve written related to organizing notes in Evernote. What follows is a list of Going Paperless articles I’ve written on organization. I list them most recent first, as the more recent posts are more up-to-date. But that doesn’t mean the older posts aren’t useful. In case here they are:

• How I Simplified My Tag Organization in Evernote (Part 2) (July 29, 2014)
• How I Simplified My Notebook Organization in Evernote (Part 1) (July 15, 2014)
• Quick Tip: Create a Table of Contents for a Set of Arbitrary Notes (Mac-only) (January 21, 2014)
• My Process for Keeping Evernote Clutter-Free (January 14, 2014)
• Quick Tip: Scan Now, Organize Later (November 20, 2013)
• More Tips for Using Evernote as a Timeline (Plus Reminders!) (June 18, 2013)
• How I Title My Notes in Evernote (March 5, 2013)
• My Annotated Notebook and Tag Structure in Evernote (January 30, 2013)
• A Closer Look at How I Organize My Notes In Evernote (January 29, 2013)
• Spring Cleaning, Or Archiving Your Paperless Data (May 29, 2012)
• Tips for Organizing Your Digital File Cabinet (May 1, 2012)

Next time, I’ll have a index of Going Paperless posts related to searching in Evernote.

Since I’ve given up the regular schedule of posting my Going Paperless posts¹ I thought it might be interesting to go through the 120+ posts I’d written and choose my 10 personal favorites. These are the posts that I had the most fun writing and that I also think are among the better posts I’ve written, both in terms of quality and subject matter. Your mileage may vary. Here they are, from most recent to least-recent:

1. Quick Tip: How I Do a Daily Review in Evernote (February 5, 2014)
2. A Primer for Going Paperless in 2014 (November 26, 2013)
3. A Framework for Searching in Evernote (October 29, 2013)
4. My Paperless Cloud (July 9, 2013)
5. Digitizing Old Letters (June 11, 2013)
6. How I Title My Notes in Evernote (March 5, 2013)
7. A Day In the Life of a Paperless Writer (September 18, 2012)
8. Automating the Creation of Meeting Minutes Using IFTTT and Evernote(September 11, 2012)
9. Creating a Digital Version of Your House Using Evernote, Penultimate, and Skitch (June 26, 2012)
10. Tips On How I Use Evernote to Remember Everything (May 8, 2012)

Do you have any favorites? Let me know in the comments.

All good things must come to an end. And after 2-1/2 years and more than 120 posts, this regular column has come to the end of its regular run. I stress the word “regular” because I’m sure that I will still write Going Paperless posts. They just won’t be on a regular schedule anymore, and will likely be much less frequent than they have been.

There are a few reasons I’m bringing the regularly scheduled program to an end now:

1. It’s becoming harder to come up with interesting topics each week. Doing this weekly means I’m coming up with about 50 new topics a year. It gets tough, coming up with interesting new topics each week. I try hard to only write about things that I actually do with Evernote and with Going Paperless. While there are plenty of other topics I could write about, my lack of experience with them would be somewhat disingenuous.

2. Readership has been steadily declining. Peak readership for these Tuesday posts used to come in at around 6,000 – 7,000 visits per day. This has been on a steady decline since the beginning of 2014. These days, a Going Paperless post probably sees 4,000 – 5,000 visits per day on a good day. I think part of the reason for the decline is #1 above. I’m stretching it in the topics that I cover. But part of it is natural attrition and interest moving away. It tells me it is time to move on to other topics.

3. I want to dedicate my limited time to other writing. While the Going Paperless posts have been waning, my freelancing writing has been picking up, and I want to be able to spend more time doing that, without the stress of coming up with a new topic each week. Lately, I’ve been struggling to keep to my schedule of posts every Tuesday. I’ve had a few more skipped weeks than usual, and more delayed posts as well. This is a sign that I’ve got too many irons in the fire at the moment.

So where does that leave things?

1. I will continue to blog here regularly. The blog isn’t coming to an end, just the regular Tuesday Going Paperless posts. If you like the other stuff I write here, stick around.

2. I will write new Going Paperless posts from time-to-time. I have no set schedule for this, but when I feel like I have a useful tip to share, I will share it here.

3. The Going Paperless posts are not going away. They will remain here for folks to read through and use, as will the shared notebook in Evernote.

Finally, a thank you

I wanted to  say thank you to everyone who has read these Going Paperless posts, everyone who has left a comment, provided feedback, made suggestions, and offered opinions. You have made this column what it is: a place where people can come to see how one person is trying to go paperless, and a place where the tips and tricks can be shared and discussed in a friendly atmosphere. I am grateful to all of my readers here, and while the regular Going Paperless posts are coming to an end, I hope that you’ll consider sticking around for some of the other posts I write here, and offering the same insights that you have over the last 2-1/2 years.

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As always, this post and all of my Going Paperless posts is also available on Pinterest.

Last week’s post: 5 Tips for Creating Digital Baby Books in Evernote.

I started these Going Paperless posts back in April 2012, when my daughter was about 8 months old. I was already an Evernote user when she was born (I hadn’t yet started using Evernote when my son was born) and one of the things I did at time, was start recording all of her milestones in Evernote. I did this for my son, too, but not as early as I did it for my daughter, and so I have a fairly complete record of every milestone I’ve thought to record for the first 3 years of her life.

In addition, I’d occasionally add pictures, or artwork that my kids did. I’d scan in cards that they received for their birthdays, or that they gave us for our birthdays. I kept score at the Little Man’s very first Little League game. The league doesn’t keep score at that level of play, but I kept a scorecard so that I could show it to him when he was older. And I keep a list of books for each them, that we’ve read together, in the hope that they will continue to maintain that list as they get older¹.

None of this was formally planned on my part. I just wanted to have a good record of my kids growing up, something beyond the ubiquitous photos we have today. In collecting this stuff, however, it occurs to me that I’ve created a kind of digital baby book, or a memory book, for my kids using Evernote. And so, it occurred to me that I might be able to offer tips to others who want to try to do the same. So here are a few tips for folks whom might want to try this at home.

1. A notebook for each kid

One thing that I didn’t do, that in retrospect might have made things a little cleaner, was to create a notebook for each of my kids. The notebook corresponds to what would be the physical baby book, or memory book you’d get to keep track of their early life. Instead, I used tags to identify notes that were associated with one or both of my kids, but as you’ll see in step 5, there is an added benefit to notebooks that will give the virtual baby book the feel of something more tangible.

So what do you call these notebooks? Well, anything you want, but I’d probably include my child’s name in the notebook title.

Having a separate notebook holds one further advantage. It simplifies searching when you are looking for some event or milestone in your child’s life. You can start your search by telling Evernote to look only within the notebook in question. So if my son’t notebook was called “Little Man’s Baby Book” I could start my search with:

notebook:"Little Man's Baby Book"

This would ensure that only this notebook would be searched, and my search wouldn’t be cluttered with results from all of the other notebooks that I have. I have a lot of notes that have the word “baseball” in it. Probably hundreds of them. But if I wanted to ensure I saw only those notes with the word “baseball” in my son’s baby book notebooks, I could search as follows:

notebook:"Little Man's Baby Book" baseball

and that would look only within the notebook in question for the term “baseball.”

If you had multiple children and wanted to be a little more organized about things, you could create a notebook stack called “Baby Books” or “Memory Book” (or anything else) and place the notebooks within that notebook stack.

2. Tagging milestones

Remembering to capture the milestones as they happen is important. Fortunately, Evernote makes that easy. I always have access to Evernote, be it through my iPhone, computer, or iPad. When the Little Man got his first ever base hit in Little League this past Saturday, I pulled out my phone, and added a note to Evernote. It looked like this:

When I add these type of notes to Evernote, I tag the note with the appropriate child’s name, and a tag I use called “Milestone” to indicate that the note represents some important milestone. It makes it much easier to find them.

There are all kinds of events that happen in our kids’ lives that represent important milestones. I try to be somewhat picky. I includes firsts, of course, and then I also include other types of milestones that are important to me. The best way to demonstrate is to provide some real examples, so here are some of the milestones I’ve recorded for the Little Miss:

You can see there are a wide variety of milestones. Some are just notes, noting an important event, like when the Little Miss first said, “Mama.” Others include photos or videos. Milestones can be anything, you have to decide what’s important to you to capture.

3. Photos, videos and other media

On birthdays, I take photos of the kids and those go into Evernote. It makes for a nice evolution of their growth over time. Actually, I usually include 2 version of the same photo.

The first is just the plain photo that I take. The second is a photo of the Little Man or Little Miss standing by a section of wall near the living room. I use Skitch to markup the photo showing how tall they are in that photo. This is a nice way of capturing their height and growth over time, without marking up the wall.

I’ll also occasionally capture videos in the note. When the Little Miss first began crawling, I got it on video and that was included with the note mentioning the milestone.

One thing that I capture, perhaps a little too obsessively, is all of the kids schoolwork and artwork. Each day, when this comes home, I scan the paper into Evernote. I don’t tag it as a milestone, unless it has some significance, but I do tag it with their name. If I had separate notebooks for the kids, these would probably get filed in those notebooks. Artwork gets tagged “artwork” and schoolwork gets tagged “schoolwork.” This makes for quite a collection of notes, but I think the kids will enjoy looking through it when they are older.

And yes, we do keep the originals. They get put into a plastic bin that goes into the attic. We might never look at the originals, but it is hard to toss out paper that your kids have sweated over, and into which they’ve put their creativity.

 

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A few weeks ago, I asked if there were any topics that folks would like me to cover as part of the Going Paperless series. I ask this a couple of times a year, and almost always get good suggestions. One of the suggestions that came in this time around was a post on how I manage the Going Paperless blog. That one intrigued me, so today, I thought I’d take up that topic today.

1. Keeping track of ideas

It will surprise no one that I keep track of  ideas for my Going Paperless posts in Evernote. Typically, I’ll create a note that is nothing more than a title and then give it a tag of “blog-topic.” Sometimes, I’ll add additional details to the note about specifics I want to cover, but for the most part, the notes are just a title, with the topic. Here, for example, is the note I created for this post.

Each week, I filter through the list of ideas and pick the one I am most interested in writing about that week. On occasion, I’ll come up with a last-minute idea and write about that instead, but generally, I work from the pool of existing ideas.

2. Outlining the posts

I try to write my posts on Sunday, but I’d say I’m successful about only 50% of the time. If I don’t write the post on Sunday, then I tend to write it Monday night (25% of the time) and if I don’t write it Monday day, I write it first thing Tuesday morning (25% of the time). As it happens, I am writing this post first thing Tuesday morning because by the time I finished everything else yesterday, I was too exhausted to write any more.

Over the years, I’ve developed the habit of doing a rough outline of my Going Paperless posts. I generally don’t outline blog posts, but I find that for clarity, the posts come out better when I outline them. I do this directly in WordPress, using the level 2 headings as the “topics” of my outline. These topics find their way into the post as the major “sections” of the post. The outline and the structure of the final post don’t always look identical, but they are usually pretty close. Here is what the outline looked like for this post when I started this morning. You can see for yourself the slight differences between what I outlined and what made it into the final post.

Outlining the post helps me identify gaps or leaps that I might make that could make the post confusing. The sections that evolve from the outline also serve another useful purpose when it comes to promoting the post, which I’ll get to in #9 below.

I sometimes get asked how I go about organizing the posts that I write. Rather than the tools that I used, I think what I’m being asked is how do I come up with (conceive) the actual logical organization. To this I can’t provide a good answer, I’m afraid. I’ve always had a knack for being able to “see” the organization in my head. Isaac Asimov once likened this to the way a musician can see the patterns in the music or a chess player can see the patterns in the game. I see the patterns in the organization, and it falls into place. Not always perfectly. Usually, I make some adjustments. But the general structure is there, it is not difficult for me, and, alas, I can’t describe what it is that happens inside my head to make it so.

3. Grabbing screen captures

My Going Paperless posts generally almost always contain screen captures to help illustrate the process I am describing. I use Skitch for all of my screen captures. It is by far my favorite tool for capturing screen shots, and annotating them, and I use it on my iMac (where I am writing this post), my MacBook Air, my Windows laptop, and my iPhone and iPad.

Skitch makes it easy to capture screenshots with simple keyboard shortcuts. There are some additional features that I use frequently within Skitch that I really like. Two of these are:

1. Timed screen captures. Ever want to grab a screenshot of a pulldown menu, but when you do, the menu disappears. Skitch eliminates that problem thanks to its timed-screen capture feature. This works much the same way as a timed photograph. You select the part of the screen you want to capture. A timer starts and you can arrange the screen (including menus) however you like. When the timer reaches zero, it captures the screen as it looks at that moment. I wrote an earlier post on this awesome feature.
2. Image blurring. Especially for something like the Going Paperless blog, where I am using my own Evernote repository to demonstrate the ways in which I go paperless, being able to occasionally blur out parts of the image (like addresses or account numbers) is useful. Skitch comes with a built-in “pixelater” tool that allows you to blur out text and other parts of the image.

Using Skitch to capture screen shots is also very fast. And since Skitch syncs with Evernote, I can capture screenshots on my iMac at home, and still have access to them if I am working on my Macbook later on in the day. No extra steps involved.

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School has started up, and with the Little Man now in kindergarten, the volume of paper we received has increased, out of all proportion, to what I’d grown used to. His school is very good about making a lot of stuff available online. But there is a good more stuff that comes to us in paper, which means that I am back to scanning every day, in order to keep the backlog down to a reasonable level.

But, confession time: the backlog is well beyond a reasonable level.

Being known as the paperless guy means that any time I am seen within the proximity of a piece of paper, I am looked on with suspicion, and even comic derision: “Oh look,” my coworkers say, “it’s the paperless guy, coming back from the printer. Hey, what’s that you’ve got in your hand, paperless guy?” There’s no way to hide the paper so I hang my head in mock shame.

In truth, I am far from perfect when it comes to being paperless, and I thought I’d share a few of the ways that I struggle in order to demonstrate that, like anything else, this is a habit and it has its ebbs and flows. Or put another way: don’t stress about the paper you do use.

Confession #1: My paperless Inbox is overflowing.

Earlier in the week, I wrote a post on how I manage to stay at Inbox Zero with my email. The same is not true when it comes to my Evernote Inbox notebook.

I use my Inbox notebook much the same way you’d use an inbox on your desk. Everything not automatically filed goes into the inbox by default. This includes stuff that I scan, emails that I send to Evernote, notes I jot down on the fly. These notes may not add up to much on any given day, but over time, if the inbox is ignored, they build up quickly. Case in point: as of this morning, there are more than 1,000 unfiled notes in my inbox:

Several times a week, I look guiltily at my inbox and think, I really need to do something about that. I do this much the same way I might look at the junk in the attic. But the junk stays in the attic, and the inbox stays unchanged.

Of course, the difference between my attic and my inbox is that, despite the volume of notes in the inbox, they are still easy to search using Evernote. Imagine if it was as easy to search your attic?

Confession #2: I sometime forget what I’ve scanned and overscan.

Although I have a process in place for scanning paper each day, I must confess that I don’t always follow it. Life intervenes, time is short, the kids need me for something, and I get distracted. While I usually get the paper scanned it, I don’t always shred the paper immediately afterward. Sometimes it sits on my desk for days, and later, when I tackle the pile, I can’t remember what I’ve scanned and what I haven’t.

This is laziness on my part. It would be easy to do a quick search in Evernote to find out if I’ve already scanned the thing sitting the pile… but I don’t. For the purpose of speeding things along, I assume that I haven’t scanned it, and scan everything in again. This leads to extra stuff in the inbox, but it also leads to embarrassing searches, where I find, on occasion, that I’ve scanned the same document three times.

When I find these extra scans, I’ll delete them, but it’s not like I’m out there hunting for them on a regular basis. I have enough trouble just keeping my inbox below 1,000 notes.

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At the day job, we’ve been going through various business continuity exercises over the last year or so. These are exercises in which we imagine some catastrophic disaster from which we then have to continue doing business-as-usual. Or, as close to as-usual as we can manage.

The corollary outside the business world, of course, is estate planning, something which we don’t like to dwell on, but which is necessary for the continued comfort of our loved ones after we’ve gone to the big ball park in the sky¹. Of course, it’s one thing to have the various estate plans setup, and another thing to for them to be readily accessible when they are needed.

Earlier this year I went through the process of setting up what I call a “Life Continuity” plan in Evernote and making sure that my family could easily access it in the event of my untimely demise. Roughly speaking, these are the 6 steps I went through to make sure that my life continuity plan was useful and practical.

1. Tag all critical documents with “911”

When some bad happens, things get frantic quickly. I don’t want people needlessly hunting for documents and information that should be readily accessible. So the first thing that I did was go through all of the documents that I thought would be critical: powers of attorney, wills, life insurance, etc., and tagged them with “911.”

In the U.S. “911” is the number you dial when there’s an emergency. It’s short, it’s simple, and no one who is looking through my relatively short list of tags, could mistake its meaning.

I was careful not to overdo it. I really just wanted to make sure that the most critical documents were accessible so that there was no added frustration at a time when emotions run hot. There was probably a total of 10 or 12 documents that got tagged this way.

2. Create a checklist note of the most important things to do

Back when I was private pilot, I learned about the importance of checklists. The real value of a checklist comes, not from its routine use, but when an emergency arises. You don’t want to have to hunt around for information. It needs to be right in front of you.

I tried to imagine the kind of information my family would need access to quickly, and I created a note in Evernote that outlined this information. People to contact, both friends and family, but also professionals: lawyers, accountants, etc. I tried to put the list in some order of priority so that whoever was using it wouldn’t need to think to much. Everything would be right there, including the names, phone numbers and email addresses.

Of course, I also tagged this note “911.”

3. Use note links to easily access related notes

Where it made sense, I added note links on my checklist that link to the documents to which they refer. Sure, these documents are also accessible by searching for the “911” tag, but on the checklist the items are in order, and rather than having to go hunting, or even taking an extra step to search, all you have to do is click on a link to access the note.

4. Create a “911” saved search

With the various documents tagged, it made sense to cut out one step of the process by creating a “911” saved-search. This simply searches for all documents tagged “911” no matter where they are located.

One of the nice side-effects of naming the saved search 911 is that, in my case, at least, it’s the very first search in the list.

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Every now and then, I like to ask folks for ideas or topics that they would like to see me cover in my Going Paperless posts. This is one of those times. If you have an idea or a topic that you’d like to see me cover, let me know in the comments. Don’t worry if it is something I might already have covered, but if it is, let me know if there is some aspect that requires clarification or more detail.

I’ll add the ideas I get to my list of future post topics.

One of the side-effects of being several years into going paperless is that on any given day, there isn’t much to scan. A corollary to this is that on the days that I do scan things, chances are good that I’m scanning something that I need to take an action on.

Before the good ol’ paperless days, papers that required some action on my part would go into a bin on my desk, which, if I remembered, I’d occasionally look through. Those days are long gone, and my paperless process for handling these documents is a big improvement. I thought I’d share it with folks today in case anyone else finds it useful. Here is what I do:

1. Scan the document

I still use my trust Fujitsu ScanSnap s1300i, which hasn’t failed me yet. Indeed, as of this writing, I’ve scanned 3,467 pages with the scanner. I still use a process similar to what I started with a few years back, although instead of taking me 10 minutes each evening, it might take 2 or 3 minutes every second or third evening.

2. Set a reminder on the scanned document

Once the document has been scanned, if there is some action I have to take, I set a reminder on the document. For instance, we recently got our personal property tax statements from the state of Virginia, and those bills come due in October. I scanned in the documents, and then, as soon as they were scanned in, I set a reminder for 1 week prior to the date the bill is due.

3. File the document as usual

Once the reminder has been added, I tag and file the document as usual. With that done, I can pretty much forget about it because Evernote will remember it for me. And if I need to know at any given time, what reminders are lingering out there, I can easily take a look from inside Evernote. Evernote organizes these reminders by notebook, so here are the reminder currently active in my Filing Cabinet notebook:

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Adding the reminders immediate after I scan in the document does 3 things that I find really helpful:

1. It takes the burden off me for remembering that I have something to do. Evernote will remind me, via email and via the alerts on my mobile device.

2. With the document scanned, it ensures I don’t misplace it (and then forget about it).

3. It reminds me in the context of the document itself. I like this better than adding an item to my to-do list that says, “Pay property tax.” That to-do list item would require me to go somewhere and find the document. By having the reminder as part of the document, I don’t waste any time. It’s right there when it comes time to take my action.

I’ve been using this more and more with things that I scan in, to the point where I’d guess that these day, half of what I scan gets a reminder. Of course, I’m not scanning a whole lot anymore. There is a sense of relief, once the document is scanned and the reminder is set. This is the epitome of what I think David Allen was getting at in his GTD book, when he talked about getting things out of your head. (It’s also about as close as I’ve managed to get to the GTD process, but that’s a story for another time…)

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If you have a suggestion for a future Going Paperless post, let me know. 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: How and Why I’ve Automated Backups of My Evernote Data.

Short post today as I am in L.A. for work and insanely busy. I’m actually writing this post from the bar in my hotel and it is last night, after a roughly 15 hour day of work. So please forgive any brevity.

Once a month, export all of my Evernote data to an ENEX file, which sits on an external disk. That file, in turn, gets backup by my cloud backup service, CrashPlan. It may seem kind of silly to back up notes that are already stored in the cloud, but I have what I think is one really good reasons for backing up my data.

Why I backup my Evernote data

Backing up data–even data in the cloud that is generally readily accessible–acts as a kind of insurance policy. I am planning ahead for the unexpected. Being prepared for the unexpected is something that I picked up back in my flying days, when all kinds of little problems might crop up, and being able to decide whether or not they were serious was important.

In truth, what I am preparing for is my inevitable screw up. I know that at some point in time, I am bound to so something unintentionally destructive. Perhaps, after working hard many days, with little sleep, I accidentally drag an important notebook to the trash, and then purge the trash before I realized what happened. Once that happens, and Evernote syncs with the server, the notes are unrecoverable.

That might seem extreme, and perhaps it is. But I’ve worked with technology (and been a professional in the IT field) long enough to know that I am eventually bound to screw up. Having a backup of my notes provides some measure of protection against those screw-up, and that is the main reason that I back up my Evernote data.

How I backup my Evernote data

I work primarily on a Mac, and so I wrote an AppleScript to take advantage of Evernote’s AppleScript interface to automate the process of backing up my Evernote data.

You can find my AppleScript on GitHub.

The script is pretty simple. It selects all notes after January 1, 1990, and exports them to an ENEX file on a specified path. I chose that date because it will backup any notes after that date. If you’ve created notes and dated them prior to 1990, you’ll want to change line 10 of the script to reflect the appropriate date.

You’ll also want to update line 5 with the path on your machine that you want the export file to reside. In my code, I’ve export mine to an external drive that is backed up by my cloud backup service.

When I run the script, it selects all of the notes that meet the criteria and then exports them. I have more than 8,000 notes so this takes a little while. I set the timeout to 30 minutes, which is usually plenty of time for me. When the export is complete, the script then compresses the export file so that it is a little smaller when it is backed up to my cloud backup service.

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My recent simplification of my notebooks and tags in Evernote provided me with a good opportunity to start using playbooks with Evernote, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, playbooks are a set of notes that document a repeatable process. My general philosophy is that if I have to do something more than once, I try to automate it. Sometimes that isn’t possible, either due to technical limitations or time constraints. In those cases, I create a playbook that lists out the steps of the process so that it is easily repeatable for anyone tasked with doing it. Playbooks have several advantages for me:

• They make it easy to recreate my steps for something, especially if it is something that I don’t do very often.
• They make it easier to delegate tasks because I can simply shared the playbook with whoever needs it.
• They provide a roadmap of possible future automation.

Format of my playbooks

I’ve just recently started creating playbooks in Evernote, and I’m trying to keep things simple with respect to their format. My number one rule is that they should be as clear as possible. To that end, I use a simple, clear title prefaced by the words PLAYBOOk to make it clear what it is. Here are some examples titles of playbooks I’ve created:

• PLAYBOOK: Making a commit to GitHub
• PLAYBOOK: Scheduling a Going Paperless post
• PLAYBOOK: Transferring meeting reservations from one person to another

As far as the content goes, I keep that simple, too. There are 2 sections to each playbook:

1. Use case(s): a list of the conditions under which the playbook would be useful.
2. Steps to follow.

I try to make the steps as clear as possible, writing them with the thought that someone other than me will be trying to follow them. Where appropriate, I’ll include images, screen captures, etc. Here’s one for transferring meeting reservations:

Organizing my playbooks

I don’t have a whole lot of playbooks in Evernote…yet. But I could imagine this growing pretty quickly. Since I’ve just gone through a simplification of all of my notebooks and tags, I’ve been very cautious about how I organize my playbooks.

One possibility would be to create a notebook for them. But really, that isn’t necessary. In my new notebook organization, I can simply file them in the appropriate existing notebook. I might add a new tag called “playbook” but so far I haven’t. There isn’t a need. I can find them easily enough. The reason is that my note title follows a very specific pattern:

PLAYBOOK: Process to repeat

A simple search like this:

intitle:PLAYBOOK

finds all of my playbooks no matter what notebook they are in, and no matter how they are tagged. Because of that, I have no need to add new notebooks or tags to accommodate my playbooks. Instead, I just created a saved search called “Playbooks” that uses the search criteria above.

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