I didn’t intend for this to be Evernote week here on DocumentSnap, but after writing about my Evernote handwritten note workflow and then doing a video about it, I might as well just embrace it and complete the trifecta.
There has been a lot written about organizing your Evernote notes. I have always hesitated getting into that too much because I am a big believer that everyone has to work the way that works best for them.
Some people go for a “dump everything in and search” mentality, some people meticulously tag their notes, and some people do a combination of both.
That being said, I was extremely interested when someone asked this question on Quora: How does Phil Libin (CEO of Evernote) organize his Evernote stacks, notebooks, notes and tags?
How can you turn down learning from the CEO?
I am a long-time listener of the Evernote Podcast so I had my suspicions about how he does things, and I wasn’t disappointed. Check out the Quora thread for the entire answer, but here is a sample:
Mostly, I don’t rely on organization in Evernote; I just search for what I’m looking for. There are some new features coming out soonish that’ll make that really nice.
As of the time of this answer, I have about 9,000 notes in my Evernote account divided among 45 notebooks. However, the majority of these notes are in my single, default notebook.
As I suspected, Phil is very much a “searcher”, and that works well for him (obviously). If that works for you too, don’t feel like you have to go crazy tagging and putting things in stacked notebooks.
By the way, I feel the need to point out the time that Phil commented on DocumentSnap about someone’s security concerns. How cool is that?! I met him extremely briefly at last year’s Evernote Trunk Conference, and hope to do so again tomorrow at this year’s event. Super smart guy.
(Photo by LeWEB12)
