I tell everybody I know about Evernote. Please accept my apologies for not raving about it to you yet. Michael Hyatt refers to Evernote as his digital brain. I couldn’t agree more. Any piece of information I want to keep, have access to, or might need again goes into Evernote. 

Why I Love Evernote

I discovered Evernote several years ago and quickly fell in love. Today, I have nearly 2,000 notes in Evernote. They range from meeting notes, blog posts, and articles to recipes, documents, and lists. The more you put in, the more valuable it becomes.

Not only does Evernote maintain all the information I may ever need to access again, but it accelerates my productivity.

How do you know if Evernote is for you?

See if any of these statements sound like you.

• You find yourself frustrated when you can’t find the information you know you have…somewhere.
• You can’t remember if you put that letter from the teacher in the basket in the office or in the stack on the counter.
• You find interesting articles online that you’d like to hold onto.
• You take notes and don’t know where you put them.
• You can’t remember what size clothes your kids or grandkids wear these days.
• You have to pull information from multiple places and turn it into a summary, report, or other assignment.
• You keep searching for the same information time and again (like your car repair history or medical forms).
• You are a parent or a student; you have a job, run a household, or are otherwise a human being.

If even one of these describes you, then you need Evernote.

To be clear, I am not not an Evernote affiliate and do not receive any monetary benefit from Evernote for this post. I simply love it.

What is Evernote?

For those who may not know, Evernote is an app and web service that helps you organize your life.

You can take notes, make a task list, and save things you find online right into Evernote.

Then Evernote will sync all your information across your multiple devices so you always have access to what you need when you need it.

Evernote makes it easy to sort, group, search, and share all of your notes.

Its Free! While they have multiple tiers of storage and functionality, you can do a ton with a “Basic” account. This is what I had until last year, when I got serious about eliminating paper from my life.

How can Evernote help you accelerate your productivity?

Here are 3 revolutionary reasons to turn your life over to Evernote.

1. Never Forget Anything Again

That may be a bit of an overstatement, but not by much. Last fall, when it was time to winterize the lawn mower, I was a little lost. Note: we moved to Tennessee from the desert. To avoid the same headache again, I created a note in Evernote about exactly what to do, what to buy, and when to do it.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a reminder (along with the note) that it was time to prep the mower for hibernation. Without requiring a single thought in the last 12 months, I’m all set.

What do you forget? Cousin Jeff’s birthday? What size pants Shelly wears now? Where you stashed that pot of gold? With Evernote, you can set yourself up for success.

2. Store Massive Amounts of Information for Easy Access

Find a great article on social media about how to better organize your closet? You can clip the whole article (or part of it) straight into Evernote.

Can’t find your notes from a meeting two months ago? You could if you dropped them into Evernote.

You can add websites, news articles, emails, documents, PDFs, a sketch on a napkin, voice memos…pretty much anything…into Evernote.

You can organize your info in folders (old school) or you can group it all by tags. With Evernote’s amazing search features, you can find what you need in seconds!

3. Get Organized & Eliminate Your Paper Problem

Want to hold onto that church newsletter or handout from that awesome seminar last week? All that paper can stack up fast in its physical form.

Receipts, flyers from the kid’s school, bills, last year’s birthday card from Grandma that you can’t let go of…what do you do with it all? I used to have a lot of paper.

Now, I try to scan and dump all of that into Evernote. I can access it when I need (in seconds). Plus, I don’t clutter up the counter, shelf, desk, or closet with stacks of all this paper.  Even if you don’t own a scanner, you can use your mobile device to photograph your paper and save it to Evernote in a variety formats.

Free Download

I created a PDF “30 Things I Store In Evernote,” to help you dive in to using Evernote.

Get More Done with Evernote

When I’m not busy searching for documents, notes, and information, I can get a lot done. I can pull together 5-10 sources for a blog post in no time. Evernote saves me hours every week. If you take Evernote for a test drive, you will find your own life hacks and time savers. Before you know it, you will wonder how you ever survived without it.

Question: What is one thing you keep or want to keep in Evernote? Share your ideas in the comments section! I look forward to picking up a few ideas from you.