How to Use Evernote to Organize Your Digital Brain

Think how many ideas pop into your head on a daily basis. Pop –there’s another one. Now, holding onto all of these fantastic (and not so fantastic) ideas in your head all day can be pretty exhausting, sonote-taking apps serve a very important purpose. They help you to organize your digital brain and keep your professional and personal life ticking over nicely.

Here’s where Evernotecomes in. You can use it across platforms -iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and on the web. It’s a very seamless, mobile-responsive app that’s perfect for digital natives.

Getting Started

You can organize your thoughts and ideas into Notebooks, so you can separate your different interests and projects. Notebooks can be shared with other collaboratorsby managing your permissions, so you can have a handy virtual space that colleagues can drop into to get an insight into your eccentric ideation process or pick up some new direction.Evernote is a great for visual learners and acts as a hub of ideas that you can invite others to get involved in.

Decide on the layout of your notebooks –for example, you can use card view which helps to show you recent additions to your notebook. You can add all sortsof info to each notebook, such as web page clippings, imagesand audio recordings.

It also lets you use traditional check-box bullet pointlists which help you to easily stay accountable to whatever you’ve decided to do in your week. You can cross off items, highlight, change fonts etc to make it as clear as possible when you’ve completed a task.

Attaching Files

One of the coolest aspects of Evernote is how simple it is to add voice notes to your notebooks. Sometimes it’s much easier to just record someone speaking or even your own ideas, so you can come back to it later.

Attaching files to your notebooks is super easy and you can do this from your computer or you can sync your notes to Google Drive, to link up files. It’s really straightforward with a well-designed drag-and-drop function. This is especially useful if you have a notebook for content ideas, as you can attach diagrams, videos, photos, GIFsor anything that’s going to enhance your content and make it even better.

When you need to add lots ofweb clippings to your notebooks, it can be confusing when you just have a long list of URLs to sift through –it’s not immediately obvious what they contain. You can download a web clipping extension for your browser, so as you browse, you can add clippings in a simplified articleformat –you can then add comments and notes to the clip, so it’s easy to refer back to.

Reminders

Recording notes and ideas is all very good, but you need to stay on track and make them count. This means setting yourself realistic reminders so that you can smash your deadlines and stay organized. Hit alarms on your notes, which will schedule useful reminders. They’ll then organize into list format,

so whenever you enter your notebooks, you’ll be able to see which deadlines are coming up. You can cross off your reminders when you’re ready.

Sync your notebooks with other devices too, so you’ll have no excuses for not knowing what you need to do next. With the free version of the app you can sync your notebooks with up to 2 other devices, so choose wisely.

Presentation Mode

Another neat feature of Evernote is the Presentation mode. When you’ve organized your notebook and added all of your attachments and comments, you can enter the presentation mode. It transforms your notes into a slideshow-type format, making it clean and tidy. It’ll show you everything inside your notebook in a concise and conclusive way.

Final Thoughts

Evernote is really well-designed and it’s an app that nailsuser experience and helps to make your professional life much easier. You can keep all of your ideas in one place and you can separate everything into a succinct, organized pattern, so you can view everything in a simple format.

I recommend using any app that helps to organize your digital brain, as even the very nature of making notes and recording ideas can lead to more discussion and inspiration. Don’t make everything more difficult by trying to remember it all –lots of ideas can belost because life’s busy and before you know it, you’re faced with something else to think about.

Staying organized is a great habit and it’ll lead to more focus.

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