Part 1 of this article explains why so many GTD devotees have embraced Evernote as their GTD app.

If you’ve now chosen Evernote as your GTD app – excellent, smart move! And, you can check off step 2 of my 5 Steps to GTD Success. 

Your GTD practice has a fighting chance to succeed, but selecting your app is only step 2.

Success with GTD requires you to also use your app appropriately to support an effective GTD practice. 

And unfortunately, even though they’ve chosen the right tool (Evernote), many don’t configure it properly, nor do they skillfully use it. And their productivity suffers as a result. 

I’m now going to switch focus to help those committed to Evernote as your GTD app understand how to properly use Evernote for GTD. And I’m going to do it by teaching you how you could go wrong using Evernote for GTD. 

If you currently use Evernote for GTD, I hope you’ll recognize your pitfalls and adjust your practice accordingly.

If you’re new to using Evernote for GTD, the information shared here will help you avoid the most common stumbling blocks.

There are three ways you go wrong using Evernote for GTD:

1. You’re organizing with tags

2. Your Evernote software skills are weak

3. Within Evernote, you don’t have a solid – and scalable – GTD workflow in place.

1: You’re organizing with tags

My first point is the most controversial, and based in an ongoing (heated) debate in the Evernote user community: How should you organize Evernote – with notebooks or tags? 

This is a key decision. When building any workflow in Evernote, you have to decide first if you’re going to use notebooks or tags to organize your notes. 

Given that GTD is a complete workflow – one that will define the entire organizational structure of your account – this decision shapes how you manage your GTD practice in Evernote.

You’ll find plenty of GTD organizational structures for Evernote that are tag-based (surprising given that prior CEO Ian Small reports only 2% of Evernote users organize with tags). But, tags are the wrong choice if you care about the ongoing efficiency of your GTD setup.

Note that in order to organize with notebooks, you must subscribe to Evernote as the free plan is limited to 1 notebook (and 50 notes).

Here, I’m going to teach you why notebooks are the way to go. It’s based on years of experience coaching people to success with GTD in Evernote and influenced by my expert knowledge of Evernote. 

When done, you too, will be convinced that your GTD organization should be based in notebooks, not tags. And your entire GTD practice will be improved as a result.

I’m starting with a key app feature: Evernote search. 

Nobody discusses it as a factor influencing Evernote organization — or even as part of the notebook vs. tags debate. But they should, and here’s why.

No matter how you organize your Evernote account, expecting perfection in organizing your data is a game you’ll never win. 

There’s simply too much information to process, never-ending details to manage for projects, and constantly changing priorities. Stuff is simply going to get filed in the wrong spot.  

Just like it did back when you were filing pieces of paper in manilla filing folders.  

But unlike those analog filing days, where when you misfiled the note in the wrong Pendaflex file folder, or accidentally placed the folder into the wrong filing cabinet drawer, Evernote has a magic feature that compensates for human error. It’s called search.

Join me on the next page to understand how search saves you hours each week in your GTD practice, and also impacts how you organize Evernote for GTD.

Next: Evernote Search – The Secret Weapon in Organizing Evernote for GTD® (Page 5 of 7)