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.
december 1st, 2008 at 15:26
Nice setup.
When I was using EN3 for GTD I used tags to set Project, Next Action (by context: Office, Home, etc.) and sometimes client (to separate the weed from the chaff). Then used saved searches to pull things out by @context.
december 1st, 2008 at 16:50
[...] Kooistra beschrijft op zijn weblog uitgebreid hoe hij het populaire programma Evernote heeft ingericht als zijn GTD commandocentrum. [...]
december 2nd, 2008 at 16:36
Step by step instructions on how I use evernote for GTD and Covey related project management.
december 2nd, 2008 at 16:36
Ah, the link:
http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=8043#p30579
december 4th, 2008 at 08:12
If you’d like a tool for managing your time and projects, you can use this application inspired by David Allen’s GTD:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version is available too.
december 6th, 2008 at 00:32
[...] Evernote and GTD (1) Dec [...]
december 7th, 2008 at 21:53
[...] and GTD Evernote and GTD (1) | Productivity 101. is a great first article in a series of two by Fokke [...]
februari 2nd, 2009 at 21:26
Great write up. I truly enjoy reading how others have used Evernote & GTD. Feel free to view my set up here –> http://chanceandcary.blogspot.com/2008/11/evernote-and-gtd.html
februari 3rd, 2009 at 19:34
[...] Evernote and GTD (1) [...]
februari 3rd, 2009 at 19:49
[...] via Evernote and GTD | Productivity 101. [...]
februari 4th, 2009 at 14:59
[...] As a fan of GTD, I have a “tickler” tag in Evernote where I keep track of things I need to pay attention to each day. So I can open up Evernote and know I have a presentation due in 2 weeks. You can read about more about using Evernote and GTD here. [...]
februari 14th, 2009 at 08:42
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februari 14th, 2009 at 12:59
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maart 12th, 2009 at 14:24
Personally, I find it very efficient to put the context (@Home, @Computer, @Agendas, etc) as Tags on items. That way it can change as needed and there can be multiple contexts per note, if needed. When specifically tagging an item as an @Agenda item I also put the persons name so that if I am meeting with that person I can search for everything tagged with “@Agenda AND Mike” and find everything that I needed to discuss with that person.
mei 31st, 2009 at 07:45
Awesome info! I was honestly just thinking about something similar to this the other day so, it was almost “weird” when I ran across this. You would be surprised how many people simply have no idea when it comes to this kind of stuff. Anyway, thanks for getting this info out there and I’m sure I’m not the only one who appreciates you taking the time to post this for the masses.
juni 4th, 2009 at 22:34
Lavey, thanks for the kind words. If you find out good tips on Evernote and GTD please share them here. I still am very impressed by the simplicity and power of Evernote as GTD tool.
juni 28th, 2009 at 18:57
[...] door artikelen op lifehacking en andere website’s ben ik op weg gegaan en gevonden wat ik [...]
september 9th, 2009 at 00:12
I like your setup. You basically use notebooks like I’ve been using tags. I experimented with a similar setup at first, but I ultimately reverted to an all tags configuration after finding I needed some notes to exist in multiple notebooks. Now I’m down to one notebook, with lots of tags. It seems more complicated, but it works pretty good. I’m still looking for ways to fine tune my system.
I love the idea of using a team notebook for collaboration purposes, genius!
If you want to check out my implementation you can see it here:
http://examinehealth.com/personal-productivity/69-gtd-and-evernote.html
Take care!
september 17th, 2009 at 18:45
[...] También un post donde explican cómo configurar Evernote para aplicar la gestión GTD de actividades, pero recordar que tanto en este post, como en el video tutorial que enlazo más abajo, se dan unas pautas personales (muy buenas y recomendables todo sea dicho) que pueden ser adaptadas a las necesidades específicas de cada uno: Evernote y la filosofía GTD. Configurando Evernote. [...]
september 23rd, 2009 at 08:34
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maart 27th, 2010 at 13:02
[...] is an excellent GTD tool and a tool to unclutter your mind, as well as an universal information capture tool. It most [...]
april 13th, 2010 at 09:58
I really cant see how your system can work in evernote.
A note can’t be a Next Action and @computer, would you like to explain how you get around that?
thx Darren