nov 30

Evernote and GTD (1)

GTD, Productivity 35 Comments »

Evernote and GTD: Setting up Evernote

I have been thinking about writing about my setup for quite some time now. Now that our building project in our home is almost finished I have time to get started with a series on how to make the best use of Evernote when you are using the Getting Things Done method for organizing your work.

This first post deals with setting up Evernote for best use. I have created a special account for this purpose on the Evernote web site. For now I will explain things from the perspective of the web interface of Evernote. In later posts I will discuss the different clients that are available.

If you have created your free account you are set to go. Because of the nature of the GTD process in most cases the free account which gives you 40MB of bandwidth a month is enough. But if you are a more heavy user you can always upgrade to their premium plan.

To get going all we have to do is creating a set of notebooks. In the picture below you can see what notebooks I have to make Evernote the perfect GTD tool:

The first 5 notebooks resemble the five stages in GTD, Collect, Process, Organize, Review and Do. In Inbox (the default notebook) the collecting takes place. Everything that is added to the system first is stored in Inbox. The Next Actions notebook is a place holder for actions you are going to do during the day, the Do part. In Projects are notes stored about the projects you are doing at the moment. Notes/References contains notes with information you want to have at hand. And Someday/Maybe is for storing actions that you would like to do sometime but not now.

The notebooks with the @ in the name are used for holding actions that are context based. Archive is used for archiving actions and projects that are done. General Reference is just one big notebook for all kinds of info.

TeamProject1 is an example public notebook, in a later post I will explain how you can use Evernote to collaborate with your team members.

Evernote as list manager

My primary use of Evernote is as a list manager. A notebook is just a collection of notes with in most cases just a title. See the example below.

For some information I use one note to collect a number of items. For instance the @Agendas notebook contains notes for every person that I see regular in a work or home setting. On the lists of those persons I keep track of things to ask them, to track actions I have delegated to them and sometimes to hold specific info on that person.

But I also use Evernote as the place to store all kinds of info. Account information from websites. Information on several subjects of interest, business cards and a lot more. More on that in later posts.

You are all invited to share your use of Evernote in a GTD setting in the comments.

This is the first post in a series on GTD with Evernote:

Part 1: Evernote and GTD
Part 2: Collecting
Part 3: Collecting with the iPhone
Part 4: Tags, Saved Searches and Premium
Part 5: Revisited

written by Fokke \\ tags: ,

dec 17

The Principle of the Path by Andy Stanley

Book reviews No Comments »
 

My first encounter with Andy Stanley was through his Podcast series called “Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast“. I listen to podcasts a lot during my commute to and from work. In one of those podcasts he spoke about the Principle of the Path and it struck a chord with me. So reading the book was a logical next step.  
In his book Andy leads the readers by painting some powerful and not all that common stories from the Bible right to the wisdom of the Principle of the Path.

The key idea that I got from the book: Direction – not intention – determines your destination. And it’s a big one if you dare to consider it serioulsy enough as I did. People are full of good intentions but they will bring you nowhere. Only steps in the direction will get you somewhere. I am full of good intentions both in my personal as work life. It takes courage to take steps towards your goals in stead of sticking to the intentions you have.

This principle affects your health, finances, carreer, literally all aspects of life are affected. One of the thought provoking quotes from the book: “Submission – not talent, information, or insight – is the key to good decisions“. Ultimately in the view of Andy Stanley this means submission to the will of God. And allthough I agree with him on this point I dare to say that even for people who don’t believe in God or aren’t religious there is truth in what he says about good decisions.

It is foolish for a person to seriously believe that all knowledge is already in his posession. Good decisions are made when you have tapped into as much knowledge and advice you can get, and submit to it. Or, to willingly go in the direction that is pointed out by the combined information and knowledge you have gathered.

This book is not a book to be read once. It is a book you may need to reread every time you need some advice and direction, because a big decision is to be made. I do read it every know and then, just to stay focused in times of big decisions.

 
 
 
 

written by Fokke \\ tags:

sep 08

Book review: Fearless by Max Lucado

Productivity 2 Comments »

After becoming a Book Review Blogger I have had the privilege of reading books I normally wouldn’t read. To my shame I had never read a Max Lucado book. He has written many books and reading Fearless was my first encounter with one of his books.

The book is written in a very easy to read style, fresh approach and every chapter is well crafted. The only drawback for people who don’t speak English natively, he uses quite a lot of new words or at least words I never had heard of. So I had to grab a dictionary every now and then.

I was impressed by his case that fear is an ever growing problem in our current society. It struck me that it is so evident but also very sad to envision the consequences of the rise of fear is so many lives of people around us. There are circumstances where you will experience fear but fear isn’t the end. There is more.

This book doesn’t fit in the self-help category books with quick solutions and fixes to all fears and anxieties. Sorry for that. Instead Max draws from his own life and others to make clear that yes life sucks at moments but fear doesn’t have to imprison you.

I especially liked the honest way in which the author writes about his own fear and his relationship with God, the Ultimate source of relief for fear. With Him you can look fear in the eyes. The book has encouraged me in looking for new ways to deal with fear and hopefully help people around me to do the same.

 

written by Fokke

jun 04

Evernote and GTD: Revisited (5)

GTD, Productivity 5 Comments »

It has been a while since I started using Evernote as my primary tool for doing GTD. For those of you that just now stumbled upon this blog here is a link to the page where you can find all previous posts on Evernote and GTD.

Since upgrading to the premium version I find myself mailing in more and more documents for projects and it is just great to be able to have all the current files for a project in one place.

With the new iPhone version typing text notes is greatly enhanced because I can now use the landscape keyboard. I still miss a good list view on the iPhone app but the landscape mode makes it already better to navigate and use.

I have had some issues with Evernote. Errors with very large pdf files and errors with mailing documents to my Evernote account. Because these issues were messing with me wanting to have complete trust in the system I contacted Evernote support. They rock. In both cases they understood the problem and provided a good solution.

One of the things that amazes me is that as far as I know the guys at Evernote didn’t know GTD when they originally developed Evernote. It is so funny to see that in my case Evernote turns out to be the perfect GTD app that supports all the importants aspects of GTD. It enables me to keep things under control and have the right perspective on all things in my current reality, both personal and professional.

If you have any question about Evernote and GTD please leave a comment and I’d be happy to answer them. If you have found a great way to use Evernote for your GTD setup, please share them!

This is a post in a series on GTD with Evernote:

Part 1: Evernote and GTD
Part 2: Collecting
Part 3: Collecting with the iPhone
Part 4: Tags, Saved Searches and Premium
Part 5: Revisited

written by Fokke \\ tags:

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