Evernote has been a staple of my on-line life (and often my real life too) very nearly from the time it first started up. Everyone has their own favourite ways of using it and I expect that among its millions of users there’s scarcely two identical set-ups.
I thought that today I’d just share a few of the ways I use it, in the hope that some of you might find one or more of them useful. I’ve thrown in a few general remarks about the app as well.
1. I use Evernote in three versions - the Android app, the online website and the Windows desktop. They each have their good points and bad points, but the most annoying thing about them is that there is no uniform interface so you basically have to learn how to do everything three different ways. I think they are working on this.
2. The one which works best is the Android app, and if wasn’t for the fact that I can’t type anything like as fast on a SmartPhone as I can on a desktop, I’d probably use it most of the time.
3. The Windows desktop version has the fullest feature set and makes the best use of the display qualities of Evernote, but suffers from being very slow. To keep any sort of speed up at all, you need to re-index at regular intervals, which is a long and tricky process. If you get it wrong you will delete all your notes over all your devices!
4. The Web version used to be unusably slow, but is now fast - much faster than the desktop. However inexplicably it doesn’t have a full feature set and has a completely different user interface. Or maybe it does have a full feature set and I just haven’t found where they keep the missing bits!
5. Another beef with Evernote is that they have a habit of removing some of the existing functionality whenever they do a major update. If they ever get round to putting back the function by which items which you’ve ticked on a to-do list can be hidden, then I would go out of my way to recommend Evernote as a time management app. As it is I don’t feel I can do that.
Well, this was going to be about how I use Evernote, but it seems to have changed more into a review of its bad points. I’ll keep my selection of the ways I use it for tomorrow.
But one thing you can do with Evernote is share a live list. Click here to see my live to-do list today (Sunday) as I use the Next Hour of My Life method.