The Evernote Bible by Brandon Collins, a Book Review

The Evernote Bible – The Guide to Everything Evernote, Including: Tips, Uses, and Evernote Essentials by Brandon Collins does an exceptional job of explaining Evernote and how to use it effectively. Evernote is an application that allows you to capture interesting information. To use Evernote effectively, you have to understand the differences between Notes, Notebooks and Tags.

Brandon Collins uses an analogy that enables anyone to understand what Notes, Notebooks and Tags are. Evernote is a city, and notes are the houses within the city. Cities have many buildings which are grouped into neighborhoods. A neighborhood is like a notebook – it’s a geographical grouping of houses (notes). There are many neighborhoods in a city, but any house in the city can only be in one neighborhood. Therefore any notes can only be in one notebook at a time.

Tags are categories that connect notes across notebooks. Think of a tag as a unique relationship between notes (houses) that cross all boundaries such as notebooks (neighborhoods).

Tips from the Evernote Bible by Brandon Collins

1. Create only a few notebooks and use tags to organize them. Collins uses Inbox as a default notebook, and has another called General Notes. From time to time he moves notes from the Inbox to General Notes, and makes sure that he tags them appropriately so he can find them at a later date.
2. Notes can only be in one notebook at a time.
3. Evernote can only search one notebook at a time.
4. Tag your notes appropriately so you can find them later:
   1. General Topic: Broadly what the note is about.
   2. Specific Topic: What’s in the note?
   3. Source: Where did you find the note?
   4. Project: Is the note connected to other notes you captured in notebooks? If yes, connect the new notes to the older ones.
   5. People/Places: Is the note from or about a specific person, create a tag using their name. Is the note about a specific place, create a tag with the name of the place.
   6. Quick Reference Tags: If you find notes that you refer to all the time, create a quick reference tag for them.
   7. Organize notes by level of importance and priority.
   8. You can create 100,000 notes on your Evernote account.
   9. Evernote Web Clipper is a browser extension that allows you to clip information from websites and use as a note, and it gives you the option of saving the entire page, a part, or the URL.
   10. Evernote’s search function is worth its weight in gold, so learn how to use it effectively. Limit your search by enclosing it in quotes. If you know that the keywords are in your title, use “inTitle:”. If you tagged your note using a certain word, add “tag:” to your search. You want to limit your search as narrow as possible.

Collins explains the difference between a paid and free Evernote account, and gives examples to help you decide which is best for you. He also compares Evernote to FileTrees, Google Drive (formerly Google Docs), and Microsoft’s OneNote. Based on the information Collins presents, Evernote is the leader. For those who love to watch videos, Collins has a link to a YouTube video that’s a screencast of how to setup Evernote.

Evernote Screen Optimization Walkthrough – The Evernote Bible

If you cannot view this video, click here.

The Evernote Bible includes many ways that you can use Evernote, and I was actually chuckling to myself while reading them because I recognized how much time I could save implementing a few of the ideas. Collins also talks about third party APIs that can extend the functionality of Evernote.

After reading The Evernote Bible – The Guide to Everything Evernote, Including: Tips, Uses, and Evernote Essentials by Brandon Collins you will discover many new ways to use Evernote. The book is very short, but I read it slowly because I was doing things that Collins recommended as I was reading.

I have had Evernote on my computer for over four years now, but have never taken the time to learn how to use it productively. Now that I have read The Evernote Bible, Collins has opened up a new world of possibilities for me. The book could use some editing, but if you look beyond that, The Evernote Bible is worth the read. And the best things about the book are that Brandon Collins includes a Cheat Sheet for using Evernote, as well as 99 uses, many of which you wouldn’t dream of.

Please let me know if and how you use Evernote in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this post, please share it.

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