7 December 2023

10 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity with Evernote

By Ronald Smith

Evernote is an awesome tool that syncs your notes effortlessly across multiple devices and platforms. It’s perfect for saving, editing, and sharing notes with others. Whether you’re collaborating on a project or jotting down ideas on the fly, Evernote has got your back.

When you first start using Evernote, it might seem a bit overwhelming and complicated. But fear not! Once you get the hang of it and discover its full potential for organizing your thoughts and tasks, you’ll see that it can be your ultimate personal assistant.

7 Fantastic Ways to Supercharge Your Productivity

In 1915, Albert Einstein introduced his groundbreaking theory of relativity. He dedicated himself entirely to developing this extraordinary idea. After countless hours of pondering, experimenting, and refining, he revealed his genius to the world.

In the same way, you can unleash your productivity potential with these simple techniques:

1. Capture Everything

Don’t let a brilliant idea slip away! Use Evernote to quickly and effortlessly capture all your thoughts, no matter where you are. Whether it’s a business strategy or a grocery list, jot it down and save it for later.

2. Organize Like a Pro

Keep your notes tidy and organized so you can find them easily later on. Create notebooks and use tags to categorize your notes. This way, you’ll have a well-structured system that helps you stay on top of your tasks and ideas.

3. Utilize Reminders

Evernote lets you set reminders for yourself, so you never forget important deadlines or appointments. Use alarms to stay on track and ensure you never miss a beat.

4. Collaborate with Ease

Work with others seamlessly using Evernote’s collaborative features. Share your notes and projects with colleagues, friends, or family members. With real-time updates, everyone stays in the loop and can contribute effortlessly.

5. Make Use of Templates

Simplify your workflow by using Evernote’s pre-designed templates. Whether you need a to-do list or a meeting agenda, these templates can save you time and effort, making your life easier.

6. Take Advantage of Web Clipping

Save articles, webpages, and images directly to Evernote with the web clipping feature. It’s a quick and convenient way to gather and store valuable information, making it accessible whenever you need it.

7. Make Your Searches Smarter

Evernote has a powerful search function that allows you to find your notes effortlessly. Use keywords, tags, and other search operators to refine your searches and get exactly what you’re looking for in seconds.

By following these tips and exploring the features of Evernote, you’ll unlock a world of productivity and organization. Just like Einstein, you have the power to revolutionize the way you work and achieve greatness!

In this article, I want to share some great tips to help you get started using Evernote. Let’s start with…

Save with Evernote

Organize your Ideas with ‘Tags’

Whether you’re a student, a writer, a designer, or a software engineer, you’ll be dealing with ideas. With Evernote, you can easily save and manage your ideas, without the fear of losing them.

To get started, create a new note and give it a title. Then, use the ‘Tags’ feature to categorize your idea. Start with an “Idea” tag and add another tag that describes the content of your idea. This will help you find and organize your ideas later on. Don’t forget to write a brief description of your idea for future reference. Once you’ve done this, you’re good to go.

10 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity with Evernote

Keyboard shortcuts:

  • Create a new note: Press Ctrl + N (for Windows) or ⌘ + N (for Mac OS X)
  • Create a new tag: Press Ctrl + Shift + T (for Windows) or ⌃ + ⌘ + N (for Mac OS X)
Save your idea as an audio note

What if you have a brilliant idea but no time to type it out? No worries! You can save your idea as an audio file. Simply start a new audio note, click the Record button, and start speaking into your microphone. Once you’re done, save your note.

Your note will appear in the Note List with a Speaker button, indicating that it’s an audio note.

Keyboard shortcut: Press Ctrl + Shift + U (for Windows)

10 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity with Evernote

Save Your Work in Style

Don’t feel like typing or recording audio notes? No worries! You can jot down your important information in a handwritten note instead. If you’re in the creative field, you’ll love this alternative. Need to quickly sketch out an idea?

Simply start an Ink Note, grab the pencil or pen tool, and draw whatever you need to remember. Once you’re done, save it for future reference. And hey, you can even add your signature to it for that personal touch!

10 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity with Evernote

Quick tip: Use Ctrl + Shift + I (Windows) as a shortcut to save time.

Save text and screenshots easily

With Evernote, you can save text from any app without even opening Evernote. No more copy-pasting! Simply select the text you want from a PDF or text file, copy it, and it’s automatically saved as a new note in Evernote.

Later, you can go back and edit the note to give it a title and some tags for easy organization.

Evernote also makes it simple to save screenshots. Just press Win + PrtScrn on your keyboard to capture the screen. You can choose which part of the screen you want to save, and once you release the cursor, your screenshot will be saved as a note in Evernote.

10 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity with Evernote

Shortcut key:

To clip selected text on a Windows device, press Win + A.

To paste clipboard content as a new note on a Windows device, press Ctrl + Alt + V.

To take a screenshot on a Windows device, press Win + PrintScreen.

Managing Notes and Notebooks

Synchronized Notebook

If you want your notebook and its notes to be synchronized across all your devices that are connected with Evernote, choose the option “Synchronized Notebook” when creating a new notebook.

With a synchronized notebook, you can save presentations and documents as notes, ensuring you have access to your important files on any device. Free users can only attach images and PDFs, but premium users can attach any type of file.

Shortcut key: To create a new notebook on a Windows device, press Ctrl + Shift + N. On a Mac device, press ⌘ + ⇧ + N.

Local Notebook

If you have personal notes that you don’t want anyone else to see, you can use a Local Notebook to store them securely. To get started, create a new Notebook and select the “Local Notebook” option.

With a Local Notebook, your notes won’t be uploaded to Evernote’s servers or synced to other devices. This means that your personal notes will only be available on the device you’re using.

If you work in a team and need to share information with your colleagues, you can use Evernote’s Sharing options to share a notebook. Free users can view shared notebooks, while premium users can also make changes to them. However, it’s important to note that the process of sharing varies depending on the platform you’re using.

To learn how to share notebooks on your specific platform, you can check out the guide on the Evernote blog.

Lastly, Evernote provides tools to help you organize your notes effectively. These tools allow you to categorize your notes and find them easily when you need them.

In Evernote, there are two important elements to keep in mind: ‘notebooks’ and ‘notes’. These two things serve different purposes. Notebooks are used to organize your notes, and they can be further organized into stacks.

To make the most of your notes, it’s a good idea to gather them all in one place. For instance, you can group together design plans, client feedback, first drafts, and final drafts in a notebook that is titled according to the project it relates to. This way, you can easily access all the relevant information for a particular project.

10 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity with Evernote

If you can organize all your stuff and make it easy to find by keeping it close by, you won’t have to waste time searching through a big mess to get the information you need.

Your Stuff is Safe and Sound

Keep your data secure with encryption

Evernote takes security seriously, so they added an encryption feature to keep your data safe. You can encrypt part or all of your note with a password and nobody can read it without the password.

Encrypted text doesn’t show up in the note. Instead, you’ll see a button with a password hint. When you right-click the button, you have two options: ‘Show Encrypted Text’ and ‘Decrypt Text Permanently…’. If you choose one of these options and enter the correct password, you can see the encrypted text.

10 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity with Evernote

Please be aware that Evernote only offers encryption – specifically, the RC2 encryption algorithm which is considered less secure these days – for text content and not much else.

Keyboard Shortcut: Encrypt selected text: Ctrl + Shift + X (for Windows) and ⇧ + ⌘ + X (for Mac OS X)

Become More Productive

Evernote Templates

If you take a little time to explore Evernote templates for specific needs, they can greatly enhance your productivity. Creating these templates is a breeze.

You can craft a note that includes all the necessary fields for your information, and then save and export it as an .enex (Evernote exported) file.

Check out this helpful guide on how to create and utilize Evernote templates at neseco.com, along with a few links to some pre-made templates:

  1. Evernote Templates
  2. Note templates for finance

Wrapping it Up

I hope these suggestions inspire you to give Evernote a try when it comes to organizing your school assignments, freelance projects, and meeting report deadlines. Have you already discovered the wonders of Evernote?

Do you have any clever techniques for maximizing your use of Evernote? Share your insights with us in the comments below.