simplerich

I recently noticed how Evernote had become a part of my work flow while I was on hold. I had a stack of papers in front of me and had the phone on my shoulder and was entering the information into Evernote. I hadn’t had to remind myself to do it. I just took a couple free minutes to do it.

I’ve gotten very used to importing PDFs to their website that my boss sends me. (Everything he scans winds up a PDF and from there it goes to Evernote so it will be searchable later.) Between the two of us we’re really going paperless. It’s becoming very handy for tracking down open loops and is increasing both of our productivity.

I got finished entering in the information into Evernote. I tagged it with a couple tags  and closed it up. The next day the meeting time came round and I opened up Evernote, and all my first meeting’s notes were tagged so they’d all be there in one place and we banged out that meeting, with dates, times, numbers, and all the pertinent bits in no time at all without me having to shuffle papers or look things up. Between the scanned PDFs and the tagging I had all my information at my finger tips with no pausing to look things up.

Second meeting went exactly the same way and the best part for me was the lack of stress in between the meetings. I wasn’t shuffling papers into order, high-lighting, or making sure I could find whatever they might ask for at hand. I KNEW it was at hand because it was in Evernote as either a PDF or as a file I’d generated myself. And in any event I could get to it with a mouse click without waiting on some viewer to open or file to open.

Evernote really has become my one place repository for information.

This application is the first time I’ve wanted an iPhone. It’d allow me to use it all the time instead of just when I had my laptop out. But down that road lies madness! I still use my moleskine cahier for those times, and honestly, it’s probably the fastest, easiest, most streamlined method of capture while on the road and in the field.

Sometimes I have a lot of files I need to share. Great gobs of user generated content I want other people to be able to get at, but I don’t want to e-mail to them… or just that they may not need right this minute, but they may want to get at later. Things that they might not ever need, but that I use and think they’d benefit from seeing. E-mailing these things to them is sometimes not practical or the best choice. Handing them a memory stick or burned CD or DVD isn’t going to work if they’re a zillion miles away.

Once upon a time I was a huge advocate of box.net as my primary source of file sharing. I have entire books of work forms and reference over there that I’ve shared with myself and a couple other supervisors in the company. It was my favorite, most suggested file sharing service. I could share with specific people or nobody or even make things public for anybody to access via a URL that didn’t expose all my files to the public. It was great.

Their upload functionality isn’t always what it should be though. I tried to upload multiple files last night and it just wouldn’t upload at all. I was kvetching about the upload problem to another box.net early adopter and he said that’s why he decided to give Dropbox a try and maybe it’d help with what I was looking for. I was trying to use the drag and drop interface to upload to box.net and it was letting me drag and drop, but it wasn’t doing the important part of the upload interface… the uploading. So, I signed up with Dropbox, installed a desktop client, drag-and-dropped my way into converting to a Dropbox fan in seconds. Talk about easy!  Dropbox just displaced box.net as my favorite client because I can upload files to it without having to do it by hand, one at a time, while watching it. Drag files into the folder and go about my business. It uploads files in the background, and if I drag and drop the folders on the desktop client it does that on the online version. (I can’t find a way to organize files on the online client and that’s irritating, but I assume they’ll fix that in a later iteration for now I just organize them on my desktop version and it syncs it all up quickly and painlessly.)

So, if you need to share large files with someone consider Dropbox as a way to share little Johnny’s first steps on video or all those TPS reports you typed up. You won’t regret it.

Chris asked on twitter about how people are using Evernote for GTD. I’ve read some ways people are using it and some tips, but none of them to me seem like more than just “Hey! Lookit what I can capture and how.” But that’s entirely unfulfilling as it just amounts to more STUFF.

First off, in case you don’t known. Evernote is a great web application as well as desktop and iphone application for capturing information and storing it in a central location. As such it’s my new inbox. I put PDFs in there, pictures, text documents, and notes.

I’ve got 3 files I use all the time that are always current.

1. Screaming Baby file
2. Big Ole Project List
3. Some Day Maybe

My Screaming Baby file is my immediate capture file or things that I jot down (I open it while I’m on the phone and capture things we talk about and them either do them, file them in the appropriate slot, or store them in a reference file at the end of the day and as the day goes on. If I have a second I open and process this screaming baby file. A screaming baby always needs attention to make it stop. This file should not be more than a screen long. If it is you’re not processing enough. You’re just capturing. Take a minute to organize or you’ll get overwhelmed and nothing will ever get done.

My Big Ole Project List file is where my next actions go. I hate not having what the next actions are associated with being there so I tend to have projects with the projects’ next actions indicated. I indent if I’m waiting on something and if I have next actions after the wait and want reminders I indent that as another indent. Once I’m no longer waiting I move the indent over back to the left. Once a project is completed I move it to another file, it would be a 4th, but it’s not that important, I just hate deleting anything. The 4th file is called “Done Done Done” I copy/paste the completed project over to there at the bottom, and add the date to the name in parenthesis so I know when it was completed in case later someone wants to know. This list gets gone over thoroughly at week’s end. Some projects can sit for a while, but if it sits for 2 weeks with no action I scratch it. Obviously it wasn’t important. It goes to my Some Day Maybe file from here. I want it capture, but want it off my mind nagging me. This works for me. But, I have to do it weekly or it gets big and unwieldy and I start to have anxiety attacks.

The Some Day Maybe file is just like in GTD except where I mentioned above I put things from my Project List on here if I’m not moving on them. Sometimes priorities on a project change and things go from really important to back-burner. I don’t want to forget them, and if I get caught up (lol) then I have my Some Day Maybe list to check on, and I DO check it on my weekly review, to see if any of the priorities have bumped back up.

Otherwise I use it as a huge dump bin. I file all sorts of stuff in here and tag the snot out of it. I also have folders where things should belong, and I put things in multiple folders. In the above example is a PDF of our Safety Meeting topic for June. I tagged it with  Safety, work, Safety Meeting, meeting, stress, and HR. Then I filed it in Work. Where I file it doesn’t matter as much because I use the tagging a LOT more than I use the folders. I have 2 folders total, Work and Personal. I try and keep my main folder, my collection folder empty and uncluttered, just like we’re supposed to do with our inboxes. Periodically, if I’m bored I’ll click through my “stuff” that I have filed and throw out the garbage that I don’t need any more.

So, that’s how I use Evernote as my implementation of GTD. It’s working pretty well for me so far. It keeps the stuff there once I check it off, and that’s helpful. It’s searchable which is helpful, and it’s fast for me. It also allows me to play with whole projects and not just “next actions” which to me has never been entirely satisfying. I like projects as well as next actions.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, I REALLY like the screen capture and “Copy to Evernote” parts of it. I grab webpages that way for reference all the time because it keeps the links and is searchable. Even pictures/photos are word searchable after they’ve been marinating in Evernote for a while.

It’s not entirely true I’ve reached mid-life. I’m not even sure when midlife is. I am sure I’m older than I’ve ever been before, and while I prefer that to the alternative I’m not crazy about the up-coming trailing zero my age will soon have.

I’m just now coming off a week long vacation that was perfectly timed. In the days before the vacation my boss said to me that he could tell I just wasn’t feeling it any more. I was going through the motions of the job, but I wasn’t fully vested in it. He was absolutely right. I was burned out and not sure if the job had changed or I had changed or if it was just my impending trailing zero causing me to seek change for the sake of change. I’m still not sure what was going on when I left. I’m not entirely back yet, tomorrow is day 1. But I know now that I don’t want to go back. I talked to him today about demoting myself two or three levels just to improve the quality of my life and decrease stress. It’d add a financial stress, but I’ve got money socked away and I lived on that money before. I’m sure I could again. He thought I was kidding. I’m not sure how serious I was.

All that being said, work ennui happens at times. Work isn’t who I am though. It’s something I do. As I approach the zero-trailing birthday I’m paying more attention to myself, my food intake, and my exercise. The tool I’m using to do this is Sparkpeople.com. I hate all the buttons because they all mention it’s an online diet. I’m not using that part of it. I’m using the tracking tools. Tracking my exercise and tracking my food intake. If it goes in my mouth it goes on this site. Just the awareness of what I’m eating helps me make better choices.

Sparkpeople.com has a great community feature with message boards, built in e-mail for within the system, and a wealth of articles you can read about all sorts of topics from health issues to diet to exercise. I really like the site. I like it enough to recommend it. I used to like fitday.com and suggest it to people. I set up an account there years ago. Sadly, in the intervening years it has not changed one bit. Everything else on the Internet has grown more feature rich and easy to use, but not fitday. It feels old and clunky now.

So, if you’re of a mind to go all fitness minded with me join Sparkpeople.com and add me as a buddy in there. I’d be happy to share what I know of it with you and I remember when I quit smoking, 3 years, 1 week, and 3 days ago as of today the support of a buddy was very important. I’m all about friendly helpful support. I like to give it, and I am the type who needs their positive strokes so give me a shout out if you’re interested. My name’s simplerich there too.