Get Everything Done

Since there's been some discussion of implementing FV using Evernotein other threads, I thought I'd go ahead and write up how I'm using it here.

The thing that finally drove me to Evernote was the extreme ease of universal capture. With browser plugins, easy hotkeys, and export abilities from the various apps I use to consume content (Newsify for RSS, Zite for customized news), it's trivial to get everything into one place.

I use three notebooks to manage FV in Evernote: .Inbox (this is the default notebook for all new entries), .Chain (self-explanatory), and .Done (where I move things once they're done). the leading dots are so that they appear at the top of the alphabetized list of notebooks. I also keep shortcuts to my most-frequently used notes (checklists for routines, mostly, plus the shopping list) and notebooks in the sidebar on the desktop app.

Annotated screenshot of my inbox window here: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8227179/FVinEvernote-Inbox.jpg

I keep my Inbox sorted by date modified. For repeating tasks, I just drop a space into the body of the note when I touch them and that forces them to the bottom of the list. For things that I'm working on, checklists, etc., I usually do SOMETHING in the body of the note, which has the same effect.

When I pick a chain, I just use multiple-select (cmd-click in MacOS) to pick the tasks and then move them to the .Chain notebook all in one go.... it's one click to move them and it's always easy to find the .Chain notebook because it's alphabetically first in the drop-down menu.

When I'm working a chain obviously I look at my chain notebook. Screenshot showing a chain and an in-use checklist: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8227179/FvinEvernote-Chain%26Checklist.jpg

I move "done" tasks to .Done and they live there for a while. I have a monthly timed reminder to purge "done" tasks that are more than a month old.

I do all of this in concert with Calendar for reminders of periodic tasks and things that I need to deal with in the future (reminders trigger the task going into the FV list - and now I'm wondering if I could automate that with a script...).

[Links edited to make them work - MF]

Sarah,

Many thanks for that post, it's both helped and encouraged me.

I have been AWOL from FV for many months. I needed to get back into it, but got hung up, not for the first time, on a manual system vs electronic.

This conflict got worse because I have been using my Galaxy Note 2 more and more because of the S-Pen, so much so that I also bought a week ago a Galaxy Note 10.1 so that I can have all my future notes in one place, it's just that much bigger, but still less than A4 or US letter size (I think!).

Like you, I have found that Evernote is ideal as it now synchronises between my Windows 7 Ultrabook (main device at work), Galaxy Note 2 (smartphone, has replaced my Moleskine pocketbook) and the Galaxy Note 10.1. Yet I can still use handwritten notes and either leave them like that or get the Galaxy to convert handwriting into text.

I have revamped my previous incarnation in Evernote so that my FV notebooks 'Stack' consists of:
.FV Capture (your Inbox), my default notebook
.FV Chain
.FV Completed

I am going to continue with a FV LTBW (Let The B*****d Wait) for stale items to review.

Previously I was using a 'FV Chain' tag to target the items, however I think it's better to have those items in a dedicated list as you have done. I use Ctrl to select the items and then move them.
NB: I assume you apply the FV rationale/rule to your Inbox, then move them ie don't cherry-pick from the Inbox and then apply the FV rule.

I have always kept checklists and routines in a separate notebook, but will try doing it your way by dumping them in Capture (Inbox).

Finally, from the earliest days of Mark's development (December 2008), I have always been conscious of tasks that cannot be done anywhere, but either have to be done at a specific location/time or prevailing conditions, eg I cannot submit a VAT return unless I have a decent Internet connection.

So I am trying using tags for Chores, Travel, Errands so that I can group some task accordingly.

Cheers,

Roger J

Thanks for fixing my links, Mark. They worked in the preview...

Roger: "NB: I assume you apply the FV rationale/rule to your Inbox, then move them ie don't cherry-pick from the Inbox and then apply the FV rule."

Yes - the whole inbox gets processed via FV.

I keep TRYING to tag things by location but then don't actually do it. But my location specific needs are significantly less than yours, I think. I can always just move things back to the inbox if they're not relevant at the time/location.

ohhhhh good to know. I'll try to remember that for next time.

Sarah,

Just to let you know I spent a few minutes learning about shortcuts in Evernote, now I have a couple on my two Android devices, thanks for the heads-up.

I also googled about reminders from within Evernote, seems the 5.1 Beta is addressing this issue.

Before returning to Evernote, I dabbled with Any.Do as I liked the clean interface, plus it has reminders.

Note to self: use Any.Do for SMEMA to 'isolate' myself from the tyranny of the long list in my FV Capture? Hmmmm . . . . . but I must have ONE place to dump everything as it comes to mind for the first (or subsequent) time.

There I go, tweaking again!

A luta continua.

Roger J

It turns out I was really over-engineering the process of getting reminders directly from (OSX) Calendar into Evernote. One of the default reminder options for calendar events is email. Somehow I always forget about emailing content to Evernote... but now that I've remembered I've switched my reminders to be mailed to Evernote at the appropriate times. I've done a proof-of-concept; I don't see why it won't work perfectly.

Sarah,

That seems to make sense.

Assuming you don't send reminders for appointments/events per se (maybe for preparing for them). do you just create the email and send it at a predetermined time.

I use Outlook and my new/current employer has MS Exchange, so I'm not sure how I could set up email reminders unless via tasks.

It may be academic, I see Evernote public beta 5.1 (for Android, I presume and hope) is testing Reminders, it's the most requested feature apparently although there are other related apps eg EverNotify.

"Assuming you don't send reminders for appointments/events per se (maybe for preparing for them). do you just create the email and send it at a predetermined time."

Right, just for tasks that I want to cycle into the list at predetermined times - things like reminders to clean out my downloads folder (monthly) or tasks that I want to become active at a later date (planning for next fall's courses, for example). The reminder is set up as an "event" (I have a "reminders" calendar for such things) with a alert sent to my Evernote email address, thus landing it in my inbox.

And now that Evernote includes reminders...

... I don't like them for reminders. I want "reminders" to be things that aren't in my list yet but automated so I don't have to worry about them.

... I DO like them for the chain. Rather than moving selected items to the .Chain notebook, I'm just marking them as reminders in my inbox. Ignore the whole email notification bit of it and lo, my chain is at the top of my list, just sitting there waiting for me to work on those things. Plus you get the satisfaction of putting ticky-marks next to things. :D

Sarah, your post intrigues me, and I am about ready to give it a go. One concern: once your selected items are moved into the .Chain notebook, how do you preserve the order of the chain? The order the tasks are worked on seems to be the heart of FV, so I do not want to lose that.

Now that we have FVP, it seems harder to implement in Evernote, because of the importance of selection from the task immediately following the last task done from its original spot in the list. I initially thought that using Reminders could work. However, that is very cumbersome and doesn't solve the problem of the task (note) moving to the end of the list once you've updated it. For now I'm trying to create a shortcut for the task where I need to begin the new selection process, but I can see that getting annoying, and also forgetting. If anyone has a good solution, let me know.

@Christopher E. "Now that we have FVP, it seems harder to implement in Evernote, because of the importance of selection from the task immediately following the last task done from its original spot in the list."

I'm trying to solve the problem in the following way:
1\ list ordered by "update date"
2\ use the tag "@FVP" for the selection of the tasks
3\ use one tag "@pointer" to mark the immediate following item after the one that is going to be executed

In this way, if during the execution of the task it moves to the bottom of the list, this does not affect the processing:
1\ after the execution of the task (update the body text to move it at the end of the list, in the case it is not finished) remove the "@FVP" tag
2\ ask the question “What do I want to do more than last @FVP marked task considering the tasks from "@pointer" on?”
3\ mark with "@FVP" the (eventually) selected new task(s)
4\ mark with "@pointer" the one immediately following the last selected task.

@Mark Forster: "You all seem to be making very heavy weather of this.

"The way I'd do it is to have a single note in Evernote with the list of tasks, one on each line. When I do the selection I would add a tick box in front of each selected task. When I do a task I'd tick the tick box (or delete the task altogether if I wanted to keep the list clean).

What's so difficult?"
--

That would certainly work. I've been using Evernote quite differently, with each task being its own note, and having project notes, documents, and checklists inside the note. I'd also been importing emails into Evernote that needed significant follow-up or response. The FV method of chains worked perfectly with this, and it was brilliant in handling unfinished or repeating tasks. FVP is, it seems on day 2, a quite radically different system.

@Mark Forster:

This is what I love about your work: you find simple, elegant solutions to complex problems. Yes! That's what I'll do. Thanks.

Imagine my surprise when I popped over here for reasons I can't remember* only to discover a New Mark System!

I've been using FV in Evernote (with a couple of variations, one of which has been what Mark has added with this version - appending new chain items after a selected task is actioned) for over two years now, apparently, based on when I started this thread. I'll play around with how to make it work for FVP and let you guys know what I come up with. I've also been doing some time boxing and I'll see if I can address how that would work with FVP as well.

There are a couple of reasons that I prefer each task to be its own note:
1) It makes universal capture much easier for me - I just email things to my evernote address.
1a) this is especially true wince many of my tasks are "read X" - then X is right there!
2) It lets me have checklists within tasks... just better for how my mind operates / the type of work I'm doing (checklists of student papers to grade, for example)

*Ooop, just remembered what it was: I was thinking about how one might implement FV in the newly-open-to-everyone Google Inbox.

I've been using FVP in Evernote similarly as Sarah, with one task per note. The disadvantage mentioned above, that you lose your spot in the list when you complete a task, is only very minor: I just go back to the previously selected item in the list and scan from there. It requires scanning a bit more of the list than if I were scanning from the last completed item, but usually that's not a big deal.