How I use Evernote to Manage a Busy Life and Business on the Productivity Show Podcast

 
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Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Thanh Phan of Asian Efficiency over on the Productivity Show podcast. In this hour long discussion, we went deep into advanced tips and strategies (this is no “Evernote 101” discussion). It made for a great conversation and one of my favorite podcast discussions to date.

I’ve added time stamps, links to expanded resources for the points we discussed, and a transcript below. Enjoy!

 
 

Time Stamped Resources:

  • [2:17] Three productivity resources I love:


Transcript:

Thanh Pham 0:39

Welcome to the productivity show a podcast by Asian Efficiency to help you maximize your productivity so you can get the important things done without having to sacrifice your health, family and things that matter to you. We've helped 10’s of thousands of people save time, be happier and become more productive.

Today, I'm joined by Stacey Harmon who's an Evernote Certified Consultant and helps people get set up and use Evernote. We dive deep into how she uses Evernote to run her life and business. We share examples of how other people use Evernote, and some advanced tips and strategies to get the most out of the tool. Even if you don't use Evernote, you'll learn a lot of ways to organize information and process them in whatever tool you use. You can find links to everything that we share on the show notes by going to theproductivityshow.com/268. And now on with the show.

Stacey, how are you doing today?

Stacey Harmon 1:42

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Thanh Pham 1:45

I'm excited that we can record this in my downtime apartment here in Austin in person doing it remote. It's just great that we are both in the same city and I recently saw you in Amsterdam as well

Stacey Harmon 1:56

I know! I had to go all the way to Amsterdam to reconnect with you and we both live in Austin!

Thanh Pham 2:04

So it's great to finally reconnect here and talk about Evernote today.

Stacey Harmon 2:08

One of my favorite topics, if not my favorite topic to discuss.

Thanh Pham 2:11

And you're a certified Evernote Consultant. And you love Evernote and we're going to dive into that today. But before we start talking about Evernote, one of the things we always like to do is talk about your favorite three resources that you recently encountered. So in 90 seconds or less, what are some of your favorite resources?

Stacey Harmon 2:29

Let's see. My very first is Scannable, which is a iOS app that really I use to convert any of the paper I come across in the world. I convert that into a digital format and throw it right into Evernote. So it a really powerful tool that I use multiple times a day.

I'm also playing with Superhuman. It's a new email client that is a premium email client. It costs $30 a month and it is kind of the Ferrari of email clients. Really interesting tool. I'm kind of playing with. It is faster. And the goal is to get you to inbox zero as quickly as possible. Really kind of interesting what they're doing. It's by invite only and an application process currently but really interesting tool.

And I'm also a big fan of the Calm app. I use that to kind of wind down at night and their sleep stories – amazing. I'm out in five minutes.

Thanh Pham 3:19

What's your favorite sleep story because I use the Calm app as well.

Stacey Harmon 3:22

I love the gratitude one walking you through all of the items that you can be thankful for and articulating that I fall asleep right away. I love it. And I like the I like the counting sheep one. I think it's funny. They have a lot of tongue-in-cheek ones and they are really hilarious. Have you heard the GDRP one? They actually read the GDRP rules and regulations to you in in a very monotone town to put you to sleep. It's really funny.

Thanh Pham 3:49

I actually read that last year because that's when I got introduced and I had to read it just to understand it and I almost fell asleep just reading it so I can imagine listening to it. You can fall right asleep.

Stacey Harmon 3:59

Well, yeah, Calm was all over that and it's very funny.

Thanh Pham 4:04

So we'll have links to all that in the show notes. So if you missed any of that, just go to the show notes and you'll be able to grab everything there.

So Stacey, for those who are listening, who don't know who you are and what you're up to tell us a little bit about who you are.

Stacey Harmon 4:17

Sure, my company is Harmon Enterprises and we solve your productivity problems using Evernote. So it's all Evernote all the time. I'm an absolute power-user and fanatic of the software. I don't directly work for Evernote but I am one of their Evernote Certified Consultants and I'm also one of the seven Evernote Regional Leaders. So I have a long history with the software and I came to it because I started using it and found it immensely transformative to how I worked. And that's continued for nearly 10 years now. And so I enjoy showing people how they can apply the things that I've seen work so well for me in their own life. And that's what my training products, courses and guides do.

Thanh Pham 4:57

Wow, it's been over 10 years,

Stacey Harmon 4:59

Nearly 10 years. I've been using Evernote. I haven't focused my business on Evernote that whole time but I was using Evernote to run my own social media marketing business specifically for the real estate industry. And I started to get more and more requests to train on Evernote, this powerful tool and that kind of led into tapping into what really my core talent is which is organizing. I help people get digitally organized to create workflows and processes that get the results that help them that they're after. Evernote happens to be the tool that I use that for but my skills really around helping people to organize. And Evernote is just the the best tool that I've found for that I've gone deep with it and I help other people to do the same.

Thanh Pham 5:39

And remember a few years ago, this is when I actually first met you was when you were at this like Evernote meetup I think the official Evernote meetup at this random WeWork somewhere and you were giving a talk about how you use Evernote and I remember you sharing a story of how you filed your taxes already and it wasn't even April yet. It was like early February or something like that. You're like, “Guys, I haven't really followed by taxes like this is totally possible.” And I totally remember that story. And I was sitting in the room with Zach at that time, and then they'll say, Rick, Rick Mathes, who's the Egoscue Clinic owner here in Austin. And he was on a podcast recently too. And I just remember you making such a good impression on me was like, Oh yeah, this is like this is great like Evernote can be done and use for so many different things like people should know about this. It's really cool that we can talk about this now.

Stacey Harmon 6:29

Well, one of the things I love to do is I like to teach what I actually do. So that's really kind of how my business has come about is – I'm enthusiastic about this because it has transformed my life and the taxes workflow was one that completely got me hooked on Evernote. It was so powerful and solved the real problem for me, I was scattered self employed person struggling with the stress of knowing if I was getting all my deductions, if I was going to file on time, if I was going to be audited, what was I going to do?

I had all these things that we're creating this mental stress for me. And just being able to centralize and have that information organized and searchable, retrievable and in one spot when it was time to file taxes was absolutely transformative for me. It was a big relief and made a huge, huge difference in how I was able to move forward as a business owner and evolve my business.

So I'm always happy to talk about that, because it really comes from a genuine spot of having experienced benefit from it.

Thanh Pham 7:27

So what's the overall or overarching approach to making sure that you can file your taxes on time by January 2.

Stacey Harmon 7:34

So the challenge is that your taxes aren't one time event on April 14. You should be keeping yourself organized and collecting your information and have processes in place all year long, and be doing this in micro ways.

There's a whole pre-accounting process that most people ignore completely. So you can really solve that pre-accounting process by using Evernote and Scannable - which I mentioned earlier is my like my second favorite app to Evernote - to take all of those receipts and centralize them in a single notebook.

You could get started today by creating a notebook called "2019 Receipts". And just centralize everything that comes at you either in a paper format and digitize it using the Scannable app, or a desktop scanner, or the camera that's built into Evernote.

Also, forwarding emails to Evernote, we get so many receipts via email –  you're probably holding those in a receipts label or a notebook in your Gmail or your Outlook. Forward those and centralize those and merge those next to those paper digital scans.

We also are getting receipts from PDFs that get, you know, emailed to us or we get from a purchase online and being able to web clip those into that same notebook. People don't realize that there's these divergent locations that we can be that we're collecting this information all year long. By simply putting them in a single spot in Evernote and having the habit all year long, you are miles and miles ahead come tax time.

Thanh Pham 9:03

So I'm going to guess that you probably have email rules set up to forward receipts to Evernote.

Stacey Harmon 9:10

I have some rules in place for sure because that you can auto forward to premium Evernote accounts or you get a unique email address with premium Evernote accounts. And so I do set up some. Anytime I make an Amazon purchase, boom, it forwards. Anytime I get a sale with my business boom, it's forwarding. So those kinds of things happen automatically. Yes.

Thanh Pham 9:30

And what a lot of people don't know, and is kind of like the nifty thing, is when you forward an email to your Evernote account, you can actually assign where should go and what kind of tags we should have. And that alone can make it so much easier, right?

Stacey Harmon 9:42

Absolutely. Yeah, you can right in the rule – the forwarding rule – to append the subject line of the email and have that file or tag appropriately. Really cool stuff.

Thanh Pham 9:51

So how did you originally discover Evernote?

Stacey Harmon 9:54

I was working in the real estate space and Orange County, California and Newport Beach and I was always supporting and training Realtors and real estate agents. I was teaching about technology. And I would go to these conferences and social media had risen. And I was teaching them Facebook. I was teaching them Twitter. It was 2008. Social media was like this new thing that they thought wasn't going to change their industry, right? I'm trying to say, well, it might, you might want to see that there's some business opportunity in blogging and Twitter and Facebook.

And I would sit there in the audience and listen to my fellow presenters talk about the top 10 apps of the year back in 2008. And Evernote was always on the list. It was this new category of software tools that was up and rising. And I said it earlier my core skills organizing, so it kind of caught my ear. I'm like, “I'm an organized person. Maybe I could try this in a digital format too.”

So I would download it and I have the typical story. I opened it up. I'm like, “I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this.” You know, it's a blank slate when you open it. It took me 18 months to really understand how I could use Evernote and apply it to my own life. But that's how I first learned about it and once I saw the power of it – which there's several key moments that helped me to have an a-ha moment with Evernote – I started bringing more and more things and workflows into my life.

And at one point I was running my entire social media marketing business from it and then getting more and more requests to train on it. Eventually, I shifted gears and went with what my natural inclination is, which is to help people organize and use Evernote for that.

Thanh Pham 11:27

Did you start to get requests from people to say, “Hey, Stacey, can you teach me how to use Evernote?"

Stacey Harmon 11:35

Yes, it was really organic. I was already doing public trainings. Real estate has a whole series of conferences every year where they're training agents and they want to get information on what's new and the latest and greatest. And Evernote was of interest. It's a fabulous tool for anybody who's remote. And real estate agents are. It's also a fabulous tool for anybody who is self-employed or small business owner - real estate agents fall in that category. So there's a lot of great uses for real estate agents and Evernote’s an outstanding tool for them. So I was getting a lot of requests about “How do I use this? How do I use this in the field? How do I use this back at my computer?”

The other thing it's really good for is commingling business and personal. So you can have both of those in the same interface. And a lot of real estate agents get into real estate for the flexibility of the lifestyle. And so another alignment. And there's a lot of interest, and a lot of users, in the in the real estate space as a result.

I happen to be there and enjoyed talking about how powerful tool it was and how it could really help them to be a business back end for them.

Thanh Pham 12:37

I personally don't remember how I got into it. I just remember seeing the elephant icon and then the greenish icon and it just looks kind of cool. And there was definitely a lot of buzz back then 2009/2010 around the same time when OmniFocus start to really get traction and then also Things back then was really popular. So I just start using it and, like you said, it's just a blank slate and because the tool is so flexible, I think that's also in a strange way a weakness where the tool because if you just if you heard about Evernote, you just download it and you just go, “you know, I should use this because I hear Thanh talks about this. I hear Stacey talk about this all the time”, but you don't have a purpose for it. Then I can see people struggling with that - do you see that too?

Stacey Harmon 13:25

For sure. And actually, I heard the head of Evernote’s product talk recently - he was here in Austin - and he talked about what the number one success indicator is for Evernote users who get hooked on the software and it is quantity of notes that you create. Which makes perfect sense to me because in my world, it was the receipts workflow where I really said "Oh, that works" and what's tracking receipts about? It's a way to create lot of notes over time.

So the advice I would give is find a workflow where you're actually using Evernote and creating notes so that you can see the centralization, the search, and the access power that Evernote provides.

That's really where you should start – with a single workflow that generates notes that are meaningful to you or have a specific use for you. Taxes is one of them.

Other examples – if you're online, if you're a student, and you need to do research or you're a writer, you need to do research using the Web Clipper to centralize information in Evernote is another great way to kind of see the power of what it is. The Web Clipper: it can be life changing for people – your bookmarks are gone. And now you have a searchable database of of websites that you have come across that you decided you wanted to retain, for one reason or another.

And you've got them in this place that you can search as powerfully as you can use Google Search, with the note holding the link back to the originating website. That has a lot of meaning for a lot of people because sometimes you need that now. Other times you might need it in five years. Regardless, you can hold it in Evernote and retain it and find it in the future. So a lot of people get into Evernote that way.

And it's another thing that follows in line with what Andrew Malcolm (Head of Product at Evernote) said is if you're using the Web Clipper, you're creating notes. If you're using a tax workflow, you're creating a lot of notes, most of the people that tend to see the amount of success – or tend to get hooked – on Evernote quicker and see the value in it right away.

Thanh Pham 15:21

So for everybody listening, if you're feeling like you're not creating notes, then that's probably the thing you want to look for is like, "what's something that I can use this tool for to create notes and store notes?"

Stacey Harmon 15:31

Yeah, and there's lots of ways and this is the power of Evernote. There's so much flexibility and it could be that you decide “okay, I'm going to take notes in my meetings with it”. If you if you're meeting heavy, that might be your use case, I don't have a lot of meetings. So that's not the best use case for me to dive into Evernote. It's more the taxes thing for me. But if you are researching or writing a book and you need to collect information, that's another one. Genealogy, another one I hear a lot. There's also the life document and estate planning process. That's a really valuable use case for a lot of people as well. They are needing a spot to centralize search and deal with a lot of documents particularly because it comes up at a stressful time in life. So that's another use case to consider with Evernote.

I use it a lot for travel. You and I both travel a lot. We'd love to be on the road and work from anywhere. So Evernote provides me a great opportunity that again creates a lot of notes. I have travel plans, I have itineraries. I have lodging receipts, I have people to connect with. I have notes from the conference, I have all of these different types of things that I can centralize in Evernote, and it's another gateway into understanding the power of it.

Thanh Pham 16:39

Yeah, I definitely want to dive into your workflow and how you do things and how you use it for like travel for your taxes.

You talked about earlier, your master workflow, which heavily involved GTD and then also your project management in general. But one thing is, I also want to get your thoughts on is over the last few years, a lot of apps have have come up that are very similar to Evernote or even directly compete with Evernote. Right. So I'm curious to hear what are, in your opinion, the strengths of Evernote? And what are some of the things that you consider that Evernote is weak at?

Stacey Harmon 17:14

Sure. So I think that's a great question. The strengths of Evernote are obviously the longevity of the company at this point, it's over 10 years in, so they're not likely to just "poof-be-gone". And which is a real big factor when you're talking about a place where you're storing and centralizing a huge amount of data. They are an established company at this point. They're no longer that shiny startup.

And then functionally, their data policy is very important to me. They have three pillars of security that are part of their plan. They're not data mining, which is really important to me, I own my data, it's exportable, and those things matter when I was picking this kind of software.

In terms of capture I found it to be the best capture device. I am generating notes from my mobile phone all the time I'm generating notes from my email from the Web Clipper. These are places that are all outside of Evernote, and that I'm working on all the time, so capture is so strong with Evernote. In addition, the search feature is industry leading.

So when you combine all of that with the fact that I can access it on any devices – it's device agnostic – so there are some amazing tools, but they may only work on iOS and Mac, or in Windows and Android. So the fact that I like to be able to be fluid with what device I choose over time, is another really key factor for why I chose Evernote.

On the flip side, they went through a rough couple of years, I guess you could say, and their rate of innovation with the application stalled out. So over the last couple of years we have seen, even in the last year, a management shift and a lot of new energy into the product and we are getting an insight behind the scenes they actually are doing.

They have an entire web series called "Behind the Scenes" where CEO Ian Small is getting in front of the camera and telling us what's coming and what's in beta and what the development features are. And there's a lot of buzz and excitement around that. We haven't seen them released. The latest video did say that there's going to be some beta features in the desktop clients coming soon. We don't know how soon but they said the fact that they're doing that videos and indicator that it's on the horizon. So I'm really excited to see those changes come.

The truth is the platform is so powerful, and even without evolution, it's supported me in ways I've needed it to all of these years, but I'm really excited to see what's coming next as they continue to evolve the platform. And that leads into the choices that people have these days. When Evernote started, they created an entire category. It didn't exist before. And there was huge enthusiasm and buzz around that, and huge growth around that, and huge expectations around that as well. And over time with the with the lack of focus on the product evolution they opened the door for a lot of great startups and companies to come into the mix. So certainly there are options out there. And if you're starting from scratch, I think you want to evaluate which tool appeals to you most but I think the pros of Evernote and the reasons I picked it still stand.

One of the key differences that I think people need to decide for themselves and it really is a personal choice: Do you want fluidity or do you want structure? So let's take Notion. Notion is a structured database. Evernote is not and there's pros and cons to that. So I would love to be able to have structured tables in Evernote, but it's not how the tool is built from the ground up and it's not what its core strength is about notion. On the other hand, I'm going to get tables in that regard, but I'm not going to have the full fluidity that I have with the way that Evernote works.

So it's not a right or wrong, it's a personal choice and how you feel best experiencing and organizing your data. And sometimes it's a really hard choice because you don't know what you don't know. But those are the types of levers and types of questions you need to ask yourself when you're picking a tool.

Thanh Pham 21:21

I think for anybody who is just starting off, and they're trying to find the right tool to house your needs, I think Evernote is probably the easiest place to start compared to all the other tools.

And the point that you brought up, I think is so important. This is one of my most important criteria is the longevity of the company and the funding behind it. So if I'm using an app that is started by one developer starting from a basement, then the chances of success are relatively small even though the app could be amazing. But I've seen so many times over the last 10 years, myself that you know apps come and go, some apps stay for a while, and then they disappear for a while, right. And so the funding the business model has to make sense. And especially if an app is "free", and there's no way for you to tell how they make money, I would be very suspicious about one your data, but also to the longevity of the company. Because if you end up storing hundreds of notes, or even thousands of notes, and then all of a sudden, the developer says, "Hey, you know, I can't support the app anymore, or the hardware, this company is going to die", well, guess what, you're gonna have to start all over again, and maybe you cannot even export your data. And then you have to move to somewhere else. And so, if you make that decision, I would say really look closely to that. And that's why I think Evernote is so favorable compared to others.

Stacey Harmon 22:43

Evernote's the least risk in this regard. I mean, I'm not saying Evernote is going to be around forever, I have no idea, right? But at this point, 10 years in, there is immense value in that user base. I can tell you with strong confidence that I don't think the company is going to just fold and go away. The users – like me – who are so in rested and experienced such value from it have value to somebody. My worst case scenario with Evernote is sells. But somebody will buy it because there's so much value in what the product has provided. And I also watch very closely what Evernote is doing, what the management team is doing, and clearly, the board is giving the current management leeway to evolve the product, do what the users want, and invest in the product in a way that we are excited about. So I feel really good about the direction of Evernote.

Thanh Pham 25:57

So let's dive into ways you use Evernote. You talked about taxes. I'm really curious to hear about your like GTD workflow. A lot of people that follow Asian Efficiency and the podcast. They follow GTD and probably have heard of it, but they're still sometimes figuring out which tool to use. And to me, naturally when I think about that, especially around the Mac, OmniFocus is my preferred tool for that. But I know a lot of people who use Evernote also use it in the GTD way. And so I'm curious to hear what is your workflow looking like? Do you use GTD yourself?

Stacey Harmon 26:49

Absolutely. In fact, I'm a massive fan of David Allen. When I read Getting Things Done®, it changed my life. And it was the fact that as I was reading that book I was already familiar with Evernote and I was sitting there saying "Evernote can do this. Everyone can do that." It was just click, click, click, click, click. I was ready to do GTD in Evernote, the second I finished that book and I went directly to my whiteboard mapped out how I should organize notes, notebooks, tags and stacks to have a scalable GTD deployment. And I did that in 2010 and I still use the same system today. So GTD is my master workflow that manages my entire life and Evernotes is my tool for that. In fact, to the point where I've turned it into a product because it's been transformative to me, so I call it EverDone, which is how I organize Evernote to manage GTD.

Thanh Pham 27:41

So let's get into specifics then. So let's say you get an email, right? And somebody says, "Hey, I need to do this or something" – what happens from there?

Stacey Harmon 27:51

So I applied David's principles of organize, clarify, etc. to go through the five steps of his workflow, but the truth is that Evernote is my ultimate inbox. So my goal is ultimately to take all of the places that I get inputs and centralize those in Evernote. And then all of my processing, clarifying, organizing, etc happens within Evernote.

So I view in your email example just as one channel where an action item has come at me. I go through the process of asking "what is it?" and deciding, “is it actionable?”. If it's not something I'm going to take care of within two minutes, I am forwarding that email into Evernote and it becomes processed within Evernote in my inbox there.

I will then extract what I think the action item is and place it in the proper part of my system. I have full project management support, task management support, and reference support structure within my GTD deployment and so it gets organized within that, or within my someday/maybe, or within my waiting for – it handles all the scenarios that you walk through when you go through the clarifying process.

So in your example, there might be a next action to do that I have to take care of on a certain day. Maybe it's not a calendar item, because it doesn't have a date and time. In that case, it'll go on a particular, note that for that specific day, so that then when I come to that day, I look at it I take care of that item.

Thanh Pham 29:22

Interesting. So let's see if there's another way to visualize this workflow. Let's say you're sitting down with somebody, you're taking meeting notes, and I see you have notes here, where you take it on paper. So how does that then translate into your master system?

Stacey Harmon 29:39

Yeah, so if I take paper notes, which I do frequently, I pull out Scannable. At the end of it, I take a picture of it and centralize that in my Evernote master inbox, my default notebook is titled "inbox". And I then draw a line through the paper so that I know I've scanned it and centralized it. That's my visual cue to make sure that I'm not duplicating data. I'm a big fan that data should live in only one spot. And that includes paper as well. So it'll go into my Evernote inbox. If I have time to process it, I will extract the action items and create a list out of those action items. And then I will literally cut and paste those action items into their proper spot within the system. If it's a project, it goes on my project list and I create a corresponding next action in place that either in a project notebook or on my next action list by context.

Thanh Pham 30:33

So when you start your day, and you use Evernote as your task manager, how do you then find stuff to do or how do you prioritize? What does that look like?

Stacey Harmon 30:43

So I use very heavily my adaptation of David Allen’s tickler system in a digital format. So he has a very analog concept of creating 31 folders in a filing drawer and putting things into those folders. I have a digital adaptation of that, which is the way that I manage my individual tasks for a day.

So my first thing when I wake up in the morning is actually look at my calendar. I have really hard rules about what goes on my calendar. If it has a date and a time it goes on my calendar, if it does not, it does not go on my calendar, it goes in my Evernote system, and it will go on the corresponding list for that particular day. So I have things I need to take care of, for example, today that don't have anything to do with a time I just need to make sure I take care of them. For example, I'm doing a push up challenge right now I need to take care of push up. So I've got my push ups on my list of things to do. It doesn't matter when I get it done, but I have to get it done today. And I'm committed to checking that off my list. Things like, if I have an Audible credit rollover, I put that on a particular day and then I'm committed to taking care of that. If I don't, I'm manually cutting and pasting it on to another day and I'm making a mental decision about that.

So it's a very manual process as opposed to an automated way rolling over. But I have found that immensely valuable to creating and bringing into my awareness, the quantity of things that I have to do. And that greatly impacts the commitments I say yes and no to. So I really am appreciative of the manual-ness of it. It's been a hidden benefit for me. And I talk to other people who do the same system and I find that the lack of automation is actually an advantage because we are more directly in touch with our tasks. It's almost like the KonMari Method where she's like you touch your clothes and decide, “is this going to bring me joy or not?” And if it does, you get you keep it and if it doesn't, you get rid of it.

With a manual task process, I'm forced to touch my tasks. And I have to make a cognitive decision about if this task should still on my radar or not. When you have an automated rolling over of un-taken care of tasks that can balloon out of control if you're not looking at those things. So I find the manual nature of that works really well for me in my system.

Thanh Pham 33:03

One interesting thought that comes to my mind right now is then how much time does it take for you to update things, how to manage all of this? Because I think, based on my own experience, working with people and just seeing stuff over the years, that people always have this reservation of "Okay, this sounds great. Stacey, like I love your workflow. I love your ideas. But how much time does this all take?" Is this going to take up – like an hour to every day? Is it like five minutes? Like what's realistic for people?

Stacey Harmon 33:32

So it varies dramatically. There's days that I do a weekly review, and that's all I'm doing. I'm catching up on a month's worth of backlog, for example. There's other days though, that I'm processing on the fly. And the answer to this is nearly impossible to give because it depends on so many things.

The truth is though, that I am relying on Evernote search a lot. So I'm committed to the fact that if I can get it in Evernote, I can find it. And then from there, I'm using automation as much as possible to direct things into particular folders. The receipts is a good example of that. So not having to process that within Evernote. It's just going right to a bucket where I can find it if I need it. And then I'm also making purposeful decisions about processing on a daily basis.

And for me, I start my day, part of my morning ritual is I have a 30 minute Pomodoro of processing time in order to really get on my awareness what's important for that particular day. So I'm spending at least half an hour every day.

And then I'm also using my Evernote skills, which are strong, which is a key part of this equation, your skills have to be strong. So I'm moving notes in mass using key commands. And I don't have to think about that I can do that why I'm waiting for somebody to appear on a Zoom call, so I micro-manage those little minutes in between to process during that time. And I'm also committed to doing a weekly review as often as possible.

Thanh Pham 35:10

I also think that's one of the strong points of Evernote, which is the automation side of things. So using keyboard shortcuts is one way.

Another thing is that it has a lot of integrations with other tools that you can use to automate things like Zapier and such. And so if you're a little bit more advanced you can automate some of those things.

Like you mentioned, I think having even just a few skills of just knowing how Evernote works and how to use it will make it so much more powerful. Have you seen that yourself too?

Stacey Harmon 35:40

For sure. I actually have a philosophy that the intersection that your productivity is the intersection of your software skills and your workflows. So if your software skills are weak – if you think of it as a Venn diagram, and this applies to any software tool by the way – if your software skills are weak with that tool, you can have the best workflow but the overlap between skills and workflows (your productivity) is tiny.

The second you start to improve your software skills, your efficiency skyrockets, so that productivity in a digital space really grows. So the people who are really fluent in what Evernote can offer, have higher success with the platform because they're taking advantage of all of those things.

And you see it with your email platform too. Are you using rules? If so, suddenly your productivity shoots up. Are you using key commands within your email system as well? If you're an Excel user, or using advanced calculations, same principle applies. All of these are about understanding the depth, opportunities, and constraints of those software tools. And that's going to impact your workflow design and your overall daily efficiency.

So there's an investment in picking your tool and getting fluent in it. But that is well spent because it impacts every single workflow that you do. And for me GTD is my master workflow my entire Evernote account is structured in a GTD system. And so that impacts 100% of what I do.

Thanh Pham 37:07

Earlier you mentioned you use it for taxes. You just explained your master workflow. You mentioned travel a little bit earlier, like how do you use it for travel?

Stacey Harmon 37:16

Yeah, it's another great use case.

Evernote is fantastic for any kind of road warrior. Because at the premium level, you can use it offline. So you get – all of a sudden – full access to everything while you're sitting on the airplane, which is really powerful. If you're doing a tax workflow, and you put your bills into it, you can take a look at those and review those and schedule payments – that kind of a thing.

But what I do is: I'm headed to San Francisco next month for a couple of days, and it's going to have personal elements and professional elements to it. So the first thing I do is create a notebook for that particular trip, which is in essence a project. So I do project management through a notebooks based approach in Evernote. Any new project that comes up, I create a new notebook for it and traveling to San Francisco is a project for me.

So I use a naming convention – in my case, I call it "Event" because events sometimes include travel sometimes don't, but they're related types of projects for me. And when I booked my airfare, I am forwarding that receipt with the confirmation information into Evernote. When I booked the hotel, the car, all the logistics, they all go into Evernote. I'm creating a note that logs all of my tasks, to-do's, and people to interact with. If I'm meeting with a client out there, I might put all of the notes related to that particular meeting in the notebook. If I'm doing research on things that I want to see and do there, and web clipping into that particular notebook.

One trick that I frequently use is I create a project management note and I pin it to the top of that notebook. And I use note links to create structure that lets me drill down to all of those things. So maybe I'll create note links for all the personal things, all of the confirmations and all the business types of things. So I'm using it as this micro-workspace to really facilitate anything that I need during my trip and have it right at my fingertips.

And then typically when I'm on the airplane on the way home, I'm unbundling all of that. So I'm merging notes, I'm looking at all of the data and cleaning it up. And I'm deciding what I need to keep and move it to another notebook, if it's relevant. It's a client project, maybe I need to create a new client notebook as that was the beginning of it and now I'm going to move into a new phase. And I reorganize the data and delete that notebook. And it's done.

Thanh Pham 39:32

So the pin notes in the notebook is almost like a table of contents in a way.

Stacey Harmon 39:38

Yes, that's a great way to look at it. It's kind of the master dashboard for that particular project, which happens to be a travel trip.

Thanh Pham 39:47

Gotcha. So when you're in San Francisco, and you're walking around, or you're you're hopping into a coffee shop you like "Okay, I'm in San Francisco right now. What are all the things that I need to do?", you just navigate to that notebook? And you go "Okay, let's look at the master list here" and if stuff is not updated yet, you would update it there and then going to look through the rest of the notes to see what's going on?

Stacey Harmon 40:06

That's right. And then also when I'm standing at the airport, and I need to check into my flight and pulling up that confirmation and looking for the flight confirmation number, right, so I can check in at the, at the booth there. So it's those little tiny details to just have them accessible from my mobile device all the way to sitting in the coffee shop and having my full app there where I can actually prepare for the client meeting and get ready for that. And then I'm not shy to reorganize my data as the context changes.

Thanh Pham 40:37

Gotcha. Okay, for example, I would differ from that would be to use something like Tripit for travel. So, if I booked something, or my assistant booked something, then the receipt would go into Tripit which then if I'm at the airport, I would know that if I want to check in I will use the Tripit app because it's right there.

But for you it's basically Evernote, and everything, pretty much your whole life is in Evernote.

Stacey Harmon 41:00

That's right. Yeah, that's true.

Thanh Pham 41:02

So based on what I've heard so far, you use a lot of notebooks. So what's your take then on using tags?

Stacey Harmon 41:08

So I actually think that each Evernote user needs to make a decision when they first start using Evernote. Are you going to organize your account with a notebooks based approach or a tags based approach? I think it's a foundational decision that people need to decide. And I am not against tags in any way, shape or form. I think they're very powerful element and organizational element within Evernote. I think they are a layer on top of a foundation of organizing through notebooks. That tends to be my approach.

Now, having said that, there are many successful tag based approaches to organizing. It's just that it's different from the philosophies that I teach. And there's a whole host of reasons why. I wrote a blog post on why Michael Hyatt is wrong about organizing Evernote with tags that got a lot of play, and in it I outlined the reasons why I'm not in favor of tags as your foundational approach.

And a couple of the highlights include that tags don't display the same on your desktop and your mobile device. So you can nest tags to organize them in the desktop app, but that flattens out on your mobile device, which is, in my opinion, a deal breaker. Now Evernote is changing that it's one of the beta things that we are getting introduced to and these videos that they're doing. So my opinion on that may evolve. And I think it's outstanding news for those who want to do a tag based approach, but in its current state, that's how the tool works.

The other thing that's really important when you consider how you're going to organize Evernote – and why I choose a notebook based approach– is because one of the powerful things about Evernote is the ability to share information. And you can share notes and you can share notebooks, but you can't share a group of notes that you pull based on a tag. So, if you want to utilize that feature and the collaboration and the sharing and the teamwork opportunities, you're going to want a notebook based approach. So just setting yourself up for success with all that Evernote offers, I tend towards a notebook based approach.

Thanh Pham 43:11

I would agree with that, because based on my own experience, I think in a funny way, the way you organize your computer actually is a reflection of how you do everything as an example of that, right? So the fact that you use notebooks, I'm probably going to guess that you've probably organized your stuff on your computer in folders as well, you know how to find stuff in there, and you probably don't use tags.

Stacey Harmon 43:34

Correct. Right.

Thanh Pham 43:35

So your approach is more of I need to be able to find everything by just navigating to something. Right?

Stacey Harmon 43:41

Well, you would think that. And I understand where that would come from, but the truth is, I rely on search immensely.

So I actually subscribe to search as your find tool. And I do that in my email. I don't keep notebooks in my email. I archive and search for things that I need. But within Evernote, even though I rely on search a lot, there's this segment of my mind that likes to know where to go find something. And that's what the notebook does for me. So the issue is that that fails a lot. My mind just can't always keep track of that. So then I rely on search.

And I don't need to tag my note, because Evernote search is so powerful that the entire note – everything that's in it – is basically a tag. So if I need to find it, I'm going to be able to search for it and find because Evernote indexes at the premium level or even the entire contents of documents that are embedded in it. So I rely on that in order to organize my account. I don't need to go through the opportunity to think through what my tags should be because as long as that word appears on the note, and I understand how to search appropriately – which again is a skill, an Evernote skill that I have – I can find what I'm looking for, and that's how I manage upwards of 35,000 notes in my account and can find what I'm looking for whenever I need it.

Thanh Pham 45:03

I completely agree with that. Because you don't have to add tags if you know how to search for something because the content of the note is basically everything that you want to look for. So if you're looking for something taxes related, you know, you don't have to apply a taxes tag, you can search for IRS or Internal Revenue Service or whatever. And you'll find what you probably want to look for anyway, and a downside of tags, in my opinion, is that it's really easy to clutter it up by having singular and plural.

Stacey Harmon 45:35

Oh, for sure. It's, that's another thing. It's way too easy to create erroneous tags, like the way the interface works. You could spell something wrong, you have to decide if it's singular or plural. And if you don't have rigid workflows around that tags balloon out of control so fast for people. So I agree totally with that.

The other thing though I would like to say that with my notebooks based approach, one of the things I coach on all the time is it's part of my daily and processing workflow, is I prep my notes for search success. So it's something I subscribed to. It's an underlying thing that I do all the time.

And what I mean by that is I'm putting those keywords in the note if I don't think they're there. I'm naming the note with something that's meaningful. I'm not accepting that default note title that made on creation. I'm not doing that 100% of the time. But when it's something that I know, I'm going to want to search for in the future. I'm prepping the note for that future search success. And I think that people that embrace that concept experienced huge success with the platform.

Thanh Pham 46:41

Yeah, so your notes are not call today or yesterday. It's called "meeting notes with client x".

Stacey Harmon 46:46

Correct.

Thanh Pham 46:48

"Year, year, year" or something like that?

Stacey Harmon 46:51

Yes, naming conventions, prepping my notes for success, and note links are three core skills that allow me to succeed with Evernote in the configuration I have.

Thanh Pham 47:02

So what are some other examples of ways you can use Evernote? I'm sure you've seen examples working with clients people sharing stories with you of how to use Evernote. What are some interesting use cases that you've seen out there?

Stacey Harmon 47:16

So really popular ones that kind of get people interested in the platform: I would say writers and anybody who's creatively collecting information are a big use case. Evernote's Web Clipper really supports in the collection of data. So writers are often doing that and looking for inspiration. And then it's obviously a note taking app. So the ability to craft information, collect it, create notes for different chapters and outline structure is a really great use case, which is similar to student needs as well.

I see a lot of PhD students using Evernote, great use of, again, similar skills the Web Clipper and organization of data, as well as the sharing and collaborating features with classmates - you see that a lot.

Genealogy is other big use case. People are, again, collecting data for a bunch of different areas wanting to share that with people, wanting to search based on different parts and pieces, wanting to capture data in a lot of different formats. Anytime you have that where you wanted it to be a picture, or a document, or a website, or an email, or just type notes, handwritten notes, all of that plays a good part. Those are some of the key ones that I see.

I use it for project management all the time. Every project that I have – If I'm redesigning my website, I'll create a notebook for that. And I will have a lot of details in there that support my actions as well as supporting materials. So the sky's the limit, is that to define what it is that you're trying to accomplish and create a structure that supports that.

Thanh Pham 48:53

So what do you recommend people do if they use Evernote for a while, and then they kind stop using it, and then they're afraid to get back into it because they don't know where to where to start what to do first?

And I'm sure this has happened to you to like, you may not look at something for a few days and and then you get back into it. But most people I talk to struggle with that because once they kind of give up on the tool, even though they know it's powerful, they're always a little bit afraid almost to get back in and to see what they need to do and catch up on things.

So how would you like to approach that and what would you tell people to do?

Stacey Harmon 49:33

Well, it's interesting because I just finalized a workshop that I gave that's called Starting Fresh with Evernote. So it's almost designed exactly for that use case, where you've walked away from it, you know, it's become like this digital dumping ground and you want to, and you want to get it organized and you want to start fresh.

And David Allen actually said something that I think really plays into this, which is you're going to be more productive, if you like the tools that you use, and if you feel like when you log into Evernote, it's overwhelming, or you can't find anything that you want, you're not likely to use it.

So the first step is, I talked to people about creating a clutter free inbox or default notebook.

Create a space where you're not seeing visually, all of the stuff that you have in there can just boost your productivity. Trust the fact that you can search for what you want. Don't delete your data, instead, it would be the equivalent of taking all these papers that are on your desk and shoving them into a filing cabinet. Know that they're there, but organize them in a way that is in a single notebook. Or if you want to keep your notebook structure in a single stack and clean out that default notebook so that when you log in, that's what you're seeing and it's blank and you have a fresh space that you can breathe, and one you want to work at.

It would be like walking up to a clean desk. So just create that that clean sweep of your data without deleting it without creating a second account. Know that it will all be there. And in the workshop, I showed several strategies about how you can process that legacy data as you come across it in your day. You probably clicked it or saved it because it had some meaning to you for some point in the future. So let's not delete it, let's just put it in a spot where it can be found when you look for it. And then you can process it at that time.

So clean up your workspace. That's where I'd start. And you can mass move data around really easily in Evernote. So that's what the workshop shows is how to do that.

Thanh Pham 51:34

Now with Evernote, there's probably hundreds of features, right? And there's so many things you can do. And we've talked through some examples today. But I'm curious to hear your take on what are some of the features that you really liked that most people don't use or don't even know about? For example, one of my favorite features is the copy note link.

Stacey Harmon 51:54

Right! Well note links are transformative, like mind blowing. So I'm with you. As soon as I learned about note links, what I could do with the platform, my knowledge of that exponentially expanded. So I'm totally with you – note links are the top of my list.

Thanh Pham 52:09

Yeah, so the default note link allows it to link to something and then you can look at it in a browser. Also, if you hold the, I believe is the option key, then you get a new link to save the note link. And then if you paste it, for example, on your OmniFocus task, when you tap on it, whether it's, if you're on iOS, it will actually open up the Evernote app instead of the browser.

Stacey Harmon 52:32

Yeah, so what you're referring to is technically called the classic note link.

Thanh Pham 52:40

Yes, that's what they call it.

Stacey Harmon 52:43

So just to clarify, for the audience, if you copy the note link, internally inside Evernote, just using the standard copy note link, it will open in the desktop app, if you're within the desktop app, so it's not going to kick you over to the web. But when you want to use that note link in an external service like OmniFocus, you would want to use that hidden feature which is – I think it's Command or Control, you know, whichever platform you're on will display that classic note link. And you're right. That's a great power tip.

Thanh Pham 53:07

So what are some other power user tips or hidden features that you think "Oh man, I wish everybody knew."

Stacey Harmon 53:13

So it's not really a hidden feature, but I'm shocked at how many people don't know about stacks.

Everybody's comfortable with the idea of a notebook. And this is the analogy: a notebook is a manilla filing folder. And in our physical world we have metal filing cabinets that we put those filing folders into drawers. So a stack is a metal drawer in Evernote. So you can arbitrarily group all of those notebooks into these stacks that expand and collapse just like if you were to open up a drawer and close the drawer.

There's an immense amount of visual organization that can really happen as a result of using stacks. And most people who don't fully use the platform, don't utilize that opportunity. And it's a great organizational opportunity within the interface.

And the truth is that how stacks are created on Mac and windows varies in this current iteration. So it's one of those things that trips people up because it's dependent on which platform you're on. But if you just drag and drop one notebook on top of the other in Windows, particularly, a stack is easily created, and you can name it whatever you want.

So you could have multiple notebooks for a project. And you could call this stack that client name. And you could have project A, project B, project C, project D, and have those all grouped together. So really powerful tool that opens up the possibility of what you can do with Evernote.

Thanh Pham 54:40

Now, you kind of lit up a little bit when we're talking about note links and such, so how do you use that?

Stacey Harmon 54:46

Note links are essential to my system. Internal note links in Evernote allow you to create arbitrary structure that's meaningful to you within your account. So it's just a hyperlink that allows you to navigate between any two notes in your system. And Evernote provides several ways to create them. The easiest is their table of contents feature. So you can select multiple notes, and when you do that, the right hand side of your desktop app will change and you will see a button that says "Create Table of Contents Note" and it will automatically create this roster that has all of these note links in it that allow you to just click through down to your notes.

So let's give an easy example for this one. Recipes are common use case in Evernote, people have a recipes notebook and they they clip a bunch to there. You could select all of those notes and then click the Table of Contents feature and you have this roster of all of the recipes that you have. They're all clickable links that you can click on a computer or touch with your finger from your phone and it'll jump you right to the details of that note. So it lets you drill down.

That is a core skill that I use in all of my project management opportunities as well as in my task management opportunities. So my actual item for a day might be called Thanh, but it would be about this item, and I'd hyperlink to that item, which is its own note. That may be the agenda for our call or the meeting notes or something I wanted to bring to your particular attention. So I have the ability to create the structure and drill down to more meaningful data that can live anywhere in my account. It's not subject to the organization of your account. That's really powerful stuff.

Thanh Pham 56:27

Wow, I love that. And when I think about ways that I use Evernote, one of the primary ways I use it for is checklist - all of my checklist are in Evernote. And the one I probably use the most is either the morning ritual. Because if I don't do it for a while – say I go on a trip or on a vacation and I skip it for a few days – I might forget and be like "oh, was it actually like, what did I actually do?". I always go back to that one, or, my favorite one was actually the packing one because I have a packing checklist, and every time I miss something it is because I didn't follow the checklist. And I just know that if I follow that checklist everything is taken care of.

So what are some other things that you maybe use it for or other features?

Stacey Harmon 57:11

Well, you've kind of hinted at this with your checklist option, but using templates and creating templates within Evernote that are meaningful to you is a great efficiency and use case for it.

So what you just described with your packing checklist is really a template. And I have one too where I have a packing checklist. I duplicate that note, and then I put that note in my travel notebook to assist me in packing for that particular trip. And that's just one way I use templates.

Another that I find really powerful is a lot of small business owners have people they talked to on the phone that are leads. So you could create a template that talks about all the logs all the fields like you'd have in a CRM, I mean, it really can be a lightweight CRM for so many people just starting out. And log all those questions that you want to ask when somebody actually calls you or you're talking to him on the phone. That becomes the trigger note for the next step in the process. So I think that's a great use of templates and how you can use them in Evernote. So really process development is another great option.

Thanh Pham 58:19

I really enjoyed our episode today because you shared so many different ways one can use Evernote and you gave a lot examples of how one can use it and use it for. So if people want to find out more about you what you do and how you can potentially help them with Evernote, where should they go and what are some of the things that you offer?

Stacey Harmon 58:38

You can find out everything you need to know about me and my products and services at harmonenterprises.com and I invite you to follow me on social as well. It's @StaceyHarmon and I'm most active on Twitter and Instagram.

Thanh Pham 58:50

Awesome. Well thank you Stacey for sharing all your wisdom today on Evernote and I'm sure people are gonna love this stuff and follow you around. So thank you so much for being on the show today.

Stacey Harmon 59:00

It's my pleasure. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about my favorite application.

 
Harmon Enterprises