How to Master Evernote Organization in 5 Minutes | Fix Your Workflow

Hello and welcome to another Evernote tutorial. Today I'm answering a question from one of my YouTube viewers. Love you guys. His name is Greg. He wrote in to say, nice video, excellent job. I notice you, you have many notebooks. I've watched other videos which indicate using less notebooks and more tags. What are your thoughts? I'm struggling a bit with this. Thanks. So Greg, I like to use notebooks instead of tags. I'll show you how I use it specifically. It's not necessarily the right way to do it, just how I found it super helpful. So So let me load up my Evernote here. These are all my different notebooks, and I like to use it like I use my computer. I use Evernote like I would use my computer. So I have different folders for all my different files, for all my different ideas, and then I can do a quick search if I need to find something specific. So sometimes when I'm searching for something, I, I don't know necessarily a keyword I'm looking for, or I want to see it in a group of everything else that relates to that topic, and so it's helpful to have it in a specific folder, and those are the notebooks. And sometimes I want to find something very specific and I have a keyword, and so I can use that by doing the full search. So let me show you some examples. So these are my notebooks. I like using stacks. So for example, this is my TDS note stack, and TDS is an investment I've made in a salsa dancing company. So this is a simple example of some of the things that we might be working on. So I'm looking at some t-shirts, new instructor TV ready. Like, these are kind of— I use it as to-dos. These are to-dos that I need to get done with that we're working on with the business. And within the stack, so everything in this stack is TDS notes. So that's all related to the business. And then I can have different notebooks within there that I can follow up on. So for example, these might be my TDS notes. These might be the things that we need to work on. I can go back and to the archive folder. And these are some of the things that we may have been working on before. So looking at downtown locations or YouTube mixes or New York salsa schools, all these different ideas that we've, we've already implemented, but I want to keep a record on it. So what I would do here is this might be the to-do, and when I'm finished with it, I would just right-click and move note into the folder here for archive, or just drag it in as well so it would be there. So that's why I find it super helpful, because I have a list here of all the different things that are on the to-do, and I may, you know, maybe want to work on the TV, or may want to look at AWeber, or may want to look at special events whatever it is, it's basically a list. And every month when I meet with the founder, I'll open up my TDS notes and we'll talk about what the progress is on all these different projects. So it's easy to see kind of the group. The next way I use it, another example, business receipts. So I'll keep receipts in different folders from 2008 all the way to 2013, and I do it by Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, and I can look through and find a specific receipt if I know a date range that I'm looking at. I want to kind of group them together. Then finally, another example, let me look at maybe my vacation. I use it for personal reasons as well and might throw different vacations so that the stack is vacation. These might be different vacations that I've gone on and I can click on any one. New York or Europe recently. What I'll do here is I'll find different things that I'm doing. There'll be the hotel I'm staying in Barcelona, different salsa clubs, I like to dance obviously, what to do in each city. So, you know, when we get to Rome, here's Rome, here's the picture, here's what to do, lots of interesting things. And I have this on my phone as well, so when we actually land in the city, I can go around, you know, I can look at my— this is the hotel, this is Barcelona. So each city, you know, has different things that I can go and explore, and I like having it all in one folder. So when I'm on my phone or on my laptop, I can quickly pull up the whole Europe folder and find out exactly what's going on the next day and where we should go. And I have a specific map that I can look at so I can find out where I need to get. So that's why I use the notebooks. The other way I find is super easy to get access to a specific thing is through the search. So I always make sure that everything I put into my Evernote is full-text searchable. If you're using a scanner, you might have to enable it. If you're taking pictures off your phone, it should be automatic. And at the top right here, you can search all notes. So if you're looking for something really specific, so say I needed to find, so I put an example here. Say I need to find a Staples receipt. I could put in Staples and it'll pull up the receipt. So then I can scroll through, is that the one that I wanted? So I bought some scissors or, you know, my Visa statement or whatever receipt that I have. These are pictures that I took just using my phone and it does a full text search. Which is more what I do now, but before I used to scan each one in, and so you get that kind of picture coming up. And so I find the combination of storing things in notebooks is kind of like folders on my computer. It's an easy way that I'm used to, and if I need to see everything all together for that folder, like if I'm on a trip or like if I'm meeting the CEO of this business and need to talk about it, I can do it easily there. And if I need to find something specific, then I can use the full-text search and it pulls up near instantaneous results. And I haven't had to dig in deeper, so I don't really use tags that much. That's just part of my workflow. I'm sure a lot of people have had success using it, but I haven't found that I needed it. I find this kind of solves all the needs I have, just combining notebooks and the full-text search. So hopefully that answered your question there, Greg. And if you guys like this video, please give it a thumbs up below. If you have a question about how I use it or another question related to Evernote, Leave it below. I'll make a video response. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.