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Evernote has been my primary method of organizing everything* in my life for over a decade. I would be seriously devastated if I lost access to my Evernote account, or if Evernote lost my notes(for whatever reason). They do have an export functionality, but you can only export 100 notes at a time, but I digress...

I have used several different strategies for organizing my notes over the years. I started with notebooks, but then ran into issues when I wanted to nest my notebooks several levels. After searching around on the forums I found that tags are actually the primary method of organization. I'm glad I embraced tags, that said, I feel like even my system for tagging is evolving.

One downside to Evernote tags is the lack of filtering flexibility. You cannot filter by NOT or OR, Therefore I cant do stuff like:

  • tagged biology OR anatomy
  • NOT tagged as Portfolio_hasBeenPublished

Generl Gripes​

Internal note id is not easily accessible:

  • when using the windows native app
  • when searching (in the web app, normally it's in the url, but not after you search then select)

PK_ToDo

Pros​

Evernote gets syncing right... this is the real benefit that caused me to stick with them. I rarely ever have note versioning or lost note issues, and I use Evernote across many many devices.

Tasks​

Evernote also has this concept of tasks - which are added to notes. You can also add due dates and make these tasks repeatable. I usually have around 10-20 different notes that I use to organize my tasks, and all these notes go in a tasks folder:

Task Notes

Note Organization Process​

All notes in Evernote are now categorized by note lifecycle:

Evernote Notebooks

Whenever I edit a note, add a 'modifiedUnpublished' tag if the note is already tagged with 'hasBeenPublished'. This tells me that I need to update the note in my portfolio.

If the note does not contain the hasBeenPublished tag, then I don't need to do anything (because it should already be in 1. Notes (Untagged, Unpublished) or 2. Tagged folder.

After a note is published or the decision is made to exclude it from my portfolio it will be tagged appropriately AND moved the the appropriate folder.

Notes included in the portfolio must be: tagged with Portfolio_hasBeenPublished and placed in the 3a Portfolio hasBeenPublished folder

Notes NOT included in the portfolio must be: tagged with Portfolio_ExcludeForever and placed in the 3b. Portfolio ExcludeForever folder

Notes where I have not decided whether or not I want to include will go into the Portfolio_Undecided

I have decided not to include the last update date in Evernote, BUT this does exist on the docusaurus side, so do not forget to add/update this tag when publishing

On a regular basis I should look in

  1. Notes (Untagged, Unpublished)
  2. Tagged folders

And clean them out. Once a month maybe?

I also have folders and tags: PrtYes_Incomplete_WIP PrtYes_Incomplete_ToRevisit

Any note that I have decided will go to the portfolio but is not ready to be transferred will go in one of these folders. If I am actively working on it (as with the cmake notes), then it goes in the WIP tag & folder. If it is an old note, then it goes into the ToRevisit tag & folder

I feel like this will be good for organization. So I can keep my "New" notes and "New but Tagged" Notes, separate from my "decided whether or not these should go to the portfolio or not" notes.

The numbers are important. While I can move a note directly from 1 to a 3 bucket, I would never go backwards from 3 -> 2, 3 -> 1, or 2 -> 1

Auditing will occur by looking in a folder and seeing if all notes are tagged correctly. If they aren't then I know I have messed something up and I will double check the appropriate places (portfolio, whatever) (Maybe I accidentally created a note in this folder and it hasn't actually been published to the portfolio)

Important: While I do use my evernote account for "everything", I obviously do NOT add anything to my personal account from my employer/client when I have dedicated hardware/accounts from them. In these cases there are a variety of systems I use... everything from Notepad++, to OneNote, trello, teams, etc. it really just depends on the client/employer and what they are using.