Indispensable tool for academics and everyday life

Evernote is one of the first apps I re-install on my computer when I do a fresh start install of the OS. I use Evernote several times every day and it holds some of my most important stuff. With the iOS app on my phone and iPad as well, it is with me everywhere at a moment’s notice. For my dissertation work, I clip ideas and useful website references to a special notebook in Evernote. I keep the links and bibliographic references for the online searchable editions of the main works I need. Stray thoughts and ideas to pursue later are easy to jot down in Evernote and find later.

Some of the features I find most useful are: Evernote runs text recognition on my photos (Premium subscription only, I think) so I can snap a picture of a bottle of wine we liked and find it again later searching by “Malbec” or some other word we remember about it. I can take a picture of a shelf of books and later search for titles to see which ones I already have at home. The pdf markup tools are great, and the way that it presents you with a summary of all the markups made in a document helps me find those changes quickly in a long document. I use this for my syllabus for the classes I teach. At the beginning of the term, I put a pdf of my syllabus in Evernote, then mark up any changes I want to make for the following semester. I get a summary of all those improvements, and can share the marked-up copy with others if we need to coordinate or discuss. This way I capture all those changes I want to make as they come up rather than trying to recall at one frazzled end-of-semester meeting everything that needed adjustments. Another use I have is to be the file cabinet of all my hand-written notes. I still like to take notes on reading and workshops with pen and paper. But now I scan them into Evernote and can group and find them easily without having to dig through file folders and half-empty notepads for those reading notes on Foucault. The automatic OCR doesn’t get all my messy handwriting, but enough to help the right notes come up in searches.

I also use Evernote as my library run list. As I find books I want to look at, I keep adding them to the note for the library they are located at, often sorting them by the floor the books are shelved on. Once I get to the library, I can pull out my phone and see my “shopping list” for each floor of the library and don’t waste time doubling back to a floor I’ve already visited for a different book.

Additionally, I keep the measurements, model numbers, and specifications for things I need to buy in Evernote. I can never remember which ink cartridge my wife’s printer needs - but Evernote remembers for me. What size shirts for my father-in-law? Evernote! What exact kind of printer paper do we buy for the laser printer again? Evernote!

When I have a procedure I only do once a year or once a semester, I write up the steps in Evernote and then I don’t have to recreate the wheel each time. Want to keep a running list of gift ideas for someone special as you hear them mention things? I add those to a list in Evernote and then I can remember very particular things someone may have mentioned 6 months ago that they would really like.

Checklists are easy to do in Evernote. In fact, the note writing interface is quick and simple - sometimes the best “word processor” for me to get a short text written when I need to focus on ideas without getting interference from fancy formatting possibilities.

I highly recommend Evernote as a way to let your mind relax that you have everything sorted and stored where you can find it when you need it.

KayakMN-TK421 about Evernote, v6.9.2