Evernote
Your Brain Will Thank You Later
WRITTEN BY
JAY EAGLESON
This central hub houses all of the information you want to save and easily allows you to come back to it all anytime, anywhere.
I
magine, if you will, your very own Google. A place where all of your personal documents, notes, grocery lists, ingenious ideas, bookmarked websites and photos can live. A search engine/filing cabinet/ photo album/cookbook/note-taking/ work-collaborating/cool-stuff-saving powerhouse. Well, friends, it’s real, it’s awesome, and it can all be yours with Evernote. I like to think of Evernote as a backup for your brain and the company’s tagline pretty much says it all: “Remember everything.” Record text, photo or audio notes on any device, then have them available anywhere, anytime. Imagine never forgetting that great idea you had while relaxing on the beach. Keep a shared grocery list with your significant other. Clip ideas from the web for your latest project. Store
all of your old Microsoft Word documents and be able to search through them easily to find what you need. Evernote has allowed many—including me—to become paperless and, if we’re being honest, way less forgetful. The scenario of leaving an important piece of mail or notebook at home or at the office doesn’t exist for me anymore; it’s all in Evernote. When I need to keep receipts for a business trip, I snap a photo of the receipt, then throw it away. When I have to share some ideas with my team at work, it goes into our shared notebook in Evernote. Here’s how it works: You create “notebooks” that you then fill with “notes.” Each notebook allows you to fill it with text, photos, audio notes, clippings from the web, and more. Like notebooks on a shelf, these notebooks are organized by category. Taking a trip? Curating ideas for work? Planning
a wedding? Create a new notebook for each event or project in your life. But don’t worry. You don’t have to stay too organized. Evernote’s best feature is the search functionality. It allows you to search through text, documents you’ve uploaded and photos. Photos are then scanned for text and when you search for a word in Evernote, any photo that has that word somewhere in it will show up. It’s very powerful. You’ll find yourself taking pictures of everything and searching for it later. Simply stated, I could not imagine my life without Evernote at this point. Evernote gets me. Having an index of my personal and business life with the ability to search for information anytime, anywhere is amazing. Oh, and one last thing: Evernote is free.