Productivity 101

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: Evernote, GTD

One of the wonderful things about being a blogger is that every once in a while someone wants you to review something. Or you get opportunities you normally won’t have. I don’t blog because I want to become a rich man, although money is something you can’t without in our Western Society. If you don’t have money you can’t provide your family with the basic needs of life like eating, drinking and clothing. Let alone education and healthcare.

A couple of weeks ago I read a tweet from Michael Hyatt where he announced that the first 100 bloggers to respond would get a free copy of the new book by Stephen Mansfield on the Faith of Barack Obama. I follow Michael Hyatt on Twitter and have read his blog post about the book. I am living in Europe but American politics have had my interest for a long time. There have been times in my life I seriously wanted to move to the US. Being a husband and dad of five wonderful children makes that to sheer impossible journey. But I still have a genuine interest in the history of the US. I also follow the news on what is happening across the pond.

The 2008 election campaign is something not easy to miss. Even here in the Netherlands during the Clinton and Obama battle news has been dominated by these events. For us here it is sometimes hard to understand and grasp what all the fuss is about. So I already had this book on my To Read list. So when the tweet came by, I was online and was amongst the first 100.

The faith of Barack Obama by Stephen Mansfield has clearly helped me getting a better understanding of what is going on in the US right now. If Barack Obama will become president of the US, it will be in more than one way a big change in US history. Not only because of the color of his skin but also his outspoken religious left standpoint will be new. The problem is that not everybody will have that in mind. It was a pleasure reading the book. Stephen Mansfield has succeeded in giving a nice and comprehensive overview of a big part of the political issues that are surrounding the election this year.

It is my opinion that especially those voters that want their christian worldview to be reflected in their president should read this book. As I write this McCain is in the lead in the polls. My fair guess after reading this book is that it is still too early for Obama to be able to win this election. I personally think that in the end most American citizens will choose for McCain because the America Obama stands for is still to come.

On The faith of Barack Obama, written by Stephen Mansfield, Thomas Nelson 2008, ISBN 978-5955-5250-1. 

written by Fokke \\ tags: Books, Personal

It happened. I have switched to the iPhone 3G. When the first iPhone hit the market I resisted because I couldn’t imagine that the new shiny gadget from Apple could help me out in the daily tasks I was so accustomed to with my Treo. I have been a palm user ever since I can remember.

My latest Palm device, the Treo 680, was a perfect combination of a phone, a calendar and task manager. I could read email, read my news feeds, view documents. In short it suited my needs.

When the iPhone 3G was first announced I was still under the impression that it wouldn’t meet up to my daily needs. I love gadgets but I am a very practical person. The device itself isn’t enough, it has to help me out in my workflow. When the device was announced in the Netherlands I had to wait several weeks due to heavy demands for the device. The news about bad coverage and other problems made me doubt for a while but when the call came that my reserved iPhone was waiting for me I just went ahead. Mainly because I wanted to buy a mobile internet solution anyway and the deal here in the Netherlands is very atractive (30 euro for 150 minutes and 150 text messages and unlimited data (3G and when available tmobile Wifi))

One of the main reasons to switch now is that my life isn’t that packed with projects that a failing system would hinder me. I have enough on my plate (12 projects and about 60 next actions), but there have been busier times. So I could take the risk of having to fiddle a bit fitting the new iPhone to the way I work best.

Whenever I get a new computer, phone or whatever gadget I prefer doing a complete cold-turkey switch. That is: bring over the data and turn off, sell or destroy the old device. In this way I am forced to figure the important things out and not take the easy fall back scenario to the old and trusty one.

In short, the transition has been great, the iPhone feels like a glove. It took me less than an hour to be up and running with my email, calendar, tasks and contacts. I will blog more about my iPhone experience but here are a couple of noteworthy things I have encountered:

1. Smooth transitions between the different aspects of the iPhone.
When I listen to a podcast in the car and someone calls, I just make the call, end it and I am taken back to the podcast. I never have been able to get the Treo do that.

2. Visual voicemail
This is so handy. I used to hate voicemail. For the simple reason that calling your voicemail and going through the silly voice response system is ugly at best. Now I have a list of voice-mails and can see instantly who left a message.

3. The screen
Surfing the web, reading email or documents is so much better to do on this screen in comparison to the Treo screen.

As with all technology there are things to wish and problems/errors to live by. That is also true for the iPhone. It’s not perfect. Humans aren’t perfect so the things humans create aren’t perfect either. That is just a given fact. I am happy with the result.

The thing I miss most is the ability to edit word or excel documents preferable in Google Docs. I won’t be using the iPhone to write long articles or an ebook. But being able to edit or proofread texts and fill in a spreadsheet for expenses for instance would be a great addition. For now I have created a workaround for a couple of documents with the Google Forms option.

More on how I use Evernote and other workflow things will follow, write a comment about what you would like me to cover about the iPhone and GTD.

written by Fokke \\ tags: apple, iphone, iphone 3g, ipod