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Like many people, I often end up biting off more than I can chew when it comes to time allotment and the balancing act of what we ‘want’ to do, with what we ‘need’ to do, and the resulting what we ‘didn’t get done.’  I’ve tried so many different GTD (Get Things Done or Got To Do) programs and applications I could probably write an encyclopedia on that very topic.  I’ve used everything from Outlook tasks to Google To Do Lists to Notepad to Mind Maps (Freemind) to RTM (Remember The Milk).   As a pure GTD application, Remember The Milk, in my opinion, is the class of the field.  Rumor has it that Evernote is working on some functionality that should improve this specific aspect within the application, but for now I still utilize RTM Pro as my primary to-do list organizer.  However, when you need something a bit more to get yourself organized than what RTM has to offer – Evernote is the solution.

“Hello, my name is Scott and I’m an Evernote addict.”  As of today, I have 41 notebooks filled with 518 notes in my Evernote account organized with over 160 tags and sub-tags.  Now this may sound confusing, but it actually works extremely well for the way my mind organizes information.  The good news is, no matter how you need to organize information in order to make it work for you, Evernote is likely able to adapt to that method.  It is so flexible you can organize your information in myriad of different fashions.  If you are interested in how I specifically go about organizing my information in Evernote, you can check out this posting I previously made.

I’ve re-written the following sentence about seven times now in an attempt to adequately explain what exactly Evernote is, so here it is:  Evernote is a desktop application, it is a mobile application, it is a cloud application, and it is a browser extension that helps you create a personal database of information.

Personally, I am someone who prints out ‘everything’ and organizes it into 3-ring binders.

Click to Enlarge

The above is an image from the previously mentioned article on how I use Evernote.  It is just one bookcase of several, not including the closet to the right. When I was in college, my friends always said I was the most ‘resourceful’ person they knew.  I’m sure there are less flattering adjectives to be used here, but I’ll stick with resourceful!  I like to have access to information when I need it.  Evernote allows me to avoid having to create bookmarks for every page I come across that I want to remember.  It’s probably saved about 5,000 acres of trees just from my personal reduction of printing out material.  With Evernote, when you are browsing you can simply click on the browser extension/add-on and add any material you have highlighted, or the entire page, as a note in Evernote.  You can then organize it into any notebooks you have created and further organize the information using tags.  You can also manually create notes in Evernote just like any notepad or word processing document.

Depending on which version of Evernote you have, free or premium (more on this below), you can also drop just about any type of document, image, video, audio file, etc., into a note and Evernote will generally automatically display the material in the note or add it as an attachment to the note.  For example, I may type out a note of some sort and add a .PDF file related to the topic to that note.  The .PDF file is attached to the note, but is also viewable in the note itself before or after the material you have written.  You organize your information in any way you see fit.  You can also sift through your information using attributes, which is auto-generated information about notes such as creation date, contents, file attachments, and to-do boxes.  Finally, there is the saved search feature which allows you to save certain searches if you find yourself using the same search criteria repeatedly.  Saying Evernote is flexible is like saying the sun is hot.

Screenshot of Evernote Application (Click to enlarge)

Screenshot of Tags & Attributes menu (click to enlarge)

Imaging is another fantastic aspect of Evernote.  Evernote has word recognition in photos.  In other words, if you take a picture of a sign that says “New York”, when you sync the note with the servers they will perform a search on the image for words and transform them into searchable text.  When you can’t remember where you saved the image or note, simply do a search for “New York” and the note with that image will show up in the results.  And yes, I’ve had Evernote recognize hand written words in images I’ve put in notes.  LOVE. IT.

Social Networking has met Evernote as well.  You can send your Twitter Tweets directly into Evernote.  You can choose your own twitter messages or any that show up on your stream.  You can do this directly from Twitter without any special requirements for helper apps or switching between applications with cut and paste.  What you need to do to enable this is go to Twitter, log in, and follow myEN.  MyEN will then follow you and send you a direct message (DM) with a link you need to click on.  Then, sign into Evernote and connect your Evernote and Twitter accounts.   That’s all there is to it.  NOTE: If you have a protected Twitter account, you will need to follow myEN, accept myEN follow request, and then send myEN a DM.  Then, follow the steps I outlined above.   To use myEN, all you have to do is add @myEN to the body of any public tweet. To save DMs, send a DM to myEN and it will automatically create a note in Evernote.  If you see a tweet you like in your stream, simply retweet it with @myEN in it to create a note for it.  Also, another cool little aspect of this is that if your tweet contains a URL to TwitPic (insert link), a thumbnail of the photo will show up in Evernote along with al ink to the original image.  Now, how hawesome is that?

Additionally, US residents can send Twitter updates via SMS using 40404.  Simply send a tweet to 40404 with the text message “d myEN yourmessagegoeshere”.  If you live somewhere other than the United States, please go here to find your Twitter SMS number.

If you find that Evernote suits your needs, you will likely want to go premium at some point.  There are a few features in the Premium that I really needed.  First, I needed the 500MB monthly upload allowance.  Why, you ask?  Well, what I have been doing is taking all those notes out of my 3-ring binders, putting them in my Canon PIXMA MX870 document feeder, and letting it scan away in duplex mode.  I’m probably not even 25% through all my material, but I sure sent a lot of paper to the recycling center and created more space in my home office.  Additionally, I’ve found that the 50MB single note file size has come in handy for some larger sized PDF files.  If you are into privacy and security, the SSL encryption doesn’t hurt either!  Additionally, if you need a collaboration tool, Evernote Premium allows other users to access notebooks to review and/or edit shared notebooks.  The cool part is that users can actually edit the same document in real time on the web based application or desktop.  Now, I personally don’t have a use for this, but it’s still cool. For less than $4 a month if you pay for the year – Evernote is an absolute bargain for the utility I derive from its usage.  (Sorry for the economics lingo!)

There are a few reasons why you will want to download the desktop version of Evernote over working exclusively on the web based application.  The first primary reason is speed.  The local version is much speedier in overall operation, not that the web based version is ‘slow’.  The desktop versions also tend to be easier to use because of expanded drag and drop options, live update functionality, note content encryption, and local notebooks (if you choose you don’t want it shared in the cloud).

Evernote is available on many different platforms.  As I mentioned, it’s available on the web at Evernote.com.  There are desktop clients for Windows and Mac OSX.  Web Clipper is a browser add-on that is available for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and you can also add it to other browsers using a “bookmarklet”.  For mobile devices, it is available for the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, and Windows Mobile.

I only have one thing left to share with you.  If you have a need to keep information organized, and you are not utilizing Evernote, go there RIGHT NOW! Seriously, I have come across very few applications that are as flexible, useful, and easy to use as Evernote at any price point.  And for disclosure purposes, I have no tie-ins to Evernote other than being a huge fan of the application.