As I’ve been alluding to pretty heavily over the last couple of days, I’m taking my Evernote-fu up a notch. After pretty careful deliberation, I’ve decided to take a pretty major leap and put all of my tasks, action lists, etc. into Evernote. This post will detail how I exactly I make this work (and it’s pretty damn simple). If you want to follow along, you’ll need to have an Evernote account and it would be helpful to have a Twitter account, though it’s not required. Let’s do this.
The “system” is made of up of several parts (many of which are cribbed from existing productivity methodologies, so I’m not claiming firsties here):
- The Project List
- The Someday List
- The Hit Lists
- The Dashboards
- Project Notes, References and Resources
The Project List
The Project List is, well, it’s just what it sounds like – a list of checkboxes (or “todos” in Evernote speak) that describe all of the things I want to do. Anything from “Learn Latin” to “Buy a New Toothbrush” would go here. This note gets tagged as “project list” and no other note gets that honor. We’ll explore tagging in a bit more detail later on, but that’s the gist of the Project List.
The Someday List
The Someday List is exactly the same as the Project List, except it’s for things that I may want to do at some point, but not right now. Everything in this list is reviewed very regularly (every couple of days, every week at least) for possible candidacy in the coveted Project List. This one is tagged with “someday list”, another globally unique tag within my Evernote database.
Now, if you are thinking to yourself “Man, this sure smells a lot like GTD! I thought you hated that GTD stuff or something! Foul!”, yes, the first two components of this little jigger do bear a striking resemblance to the canonical GTD setup. But, I’m afraid that the similarities essentially end there. Moving on.
The Hit List
The Hit List is a very special little thing I’ve concocted. It borrows heavily from Leo Babauta’s Zen To Done system and Bill Westerman’s Getting Shit Done system, but with some other spices added. I create a new one of these every day. The main components of the Hit List:
- 3-5 tasks that I would very much like to complete today, generally as part of something larger from the Project List.
- Any items for which I am waiting on other people and have a reasonable expectation of hearing back about during that day.
- A notes area for notes that I can add to throughout the day. I usually note anything interesting that happened or some other thought I’d like to look at several times throughout the day. I try to keep this area specific to the day at hand so it doesn’t turn into a bunch of stuff that probably ought to have it’s own note.
- A details area for trackable metrics or data that I’m currently keeping tabs on (number of sodas, current weight, ninjas destroyed, etc.).
This is the jewel of this whole thing. I create this either at the end of the day in question or first thing the next morning. The first thing I do is move any undone actions or “waiting” items from the previous day’s Hit List to the newest one. In the original note, the checkbox is replaced with an ASCII arrow (->) to indicate that it was moved to the following day. After that, I read through the Project List to see what else should be tackled today and a good action for that project goes into the Hit List. Anything I want to make sure I keep in mind throughout the day (inspirational crap, pictures of a kitten with yarn, personal affirmations, things like that) go into the notes area. The details area at the bottom gets filled in with a bunch of empty “fields” that beg to be filled in with that day’s data.
Throughout each day, items are checked off as completed or added to the list if they require my attention on the same day (along with a corresponding “project” if one doesn’t exist and the task justifies having a project associated with it). Pretty simple, really.
Dashboards
Dashboards are another really cool little trick that I definitely didn’t come up with. For a particularly large project (huge website at work, installing a new child restraint harness at home, etc.) that will have lots of discrete action steps and administrative details – these are begging for a freaking dashboard. For example:
Let’s say I’m going to start my own alligator farm that caters to the elderly. “Wrinkles and Scales”, we’ll call it. Obviously, the amount of work required to set up this type of business would be staggering. Here’s what the dashboard might look like for “Project Eldergator”:
If your project has more than a couple of details surrounding it, the Dashboard will save your ass all kinds of time spent sorting and searching for that one damn note with the phone number in it.
Project Notes, References and Resources
As for all the other materials you might need to complete a task or project like reference material, support documents, conversation logs, etc. – all that crap goes into your general notebook (or wherever – just make sure it’s not in your Tasks notebook) and is tagged intelligently. You could even write out the search query that finds all the project’s extra crap in the Evernote search box and then copy it to your project dashboard (or create a saved search). Obviously, depending on the project, the number of notes you keep for it could get very large. So make sure you’re tagging everything the right way, otherwise you’re hosed.
Collection
The only thing we haven’t covered is how information gets collected, either into Evernote itself or through some other method when I’m out and about. There are three main ways that I add new tasks/reminders/notes/etc.
- Send a DM on Twitter to @myEN (official Evernote Twitter bot)
- Email to Evernote using a private email address they assign you
- Use the global “paste into a new note” function available on the desktop apps.
See it all Work
If you want to see a sample notebook I created that contains notes representing just about all of the different ways this stuff is done, you can view it here (read-only, of course).
Why I Love the Crap out of this Setup
A short list of reasons why this configuration of Evernote makes my soul happy:
- I’m already in Evernote a ton of the time
- I can add tasks without even leaving the app I’m working in
- I’m actually building a framework for tracking more than just tasks, but behaviors and habits over time.
- I think Evernote is a pleasure to use anyway, so this shit is fun for me.
- There’s very little friction in all of it – it’s very simple to use and it moves as fast as I do.
That’s pretty much it – task-management in Evernote.
Anybody else using Evernote in a similar (or dissimilar) way when managing tasks? Anybody here think I’m full of crap and this will never scale?
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I've only skimmed so far, but this looks so totally fab! Will take another look tomorrow with Evernote open in front of me, too (see recent Tweets re insomnia…finally, I think the pillow calls).
But in the meantime, may I suggest that neither a toothbrush or an alligator allergy vaccine sound like the kinds of to-dos/tasks that you should sit on
This is similar to what I do for task management. I also use it for pure information management, such as storing code snippets for reuse, that get tagged with the original project tag as well as a code tag and a brief description of the code. I would *love* to figure out a way to use it more efficiently for time tracking, as many of the items on my “hit list” and “project list” need to be tracked so they can be billed accurately, but I haven't figured out an effective way of doing so. Any suggestions?
Brett,
I've made a couple passes at the post and I'm still trying to wrap my head around your system. I am a big fan and heavy user of Evernote, and I'm familiar with GTD. I like a lot of GTD, but I'm a better user of Mark Forster's Autofocus (which is worth a look).
First off, I think designing a system that works for YOU is paramount. Different people have different intelligences in regards to “productivity systems” (or whatever you want to call them). I don't know if I would call this a “Task Management” system. Your system does tasks, but I don't think “Someday Maybe” stuff, for example, would be called a “task.” Getting stuff out of your head is key.
I like the different elements that you have – it's given me some ideas to noodle. I think one of the best ideas out of GTD was that the ability “to find stuff when you need it” (and not at other time) is critical. I like your use of the dashboard. I am embarrassed to say that I never created a document IN Evernote (I just import or email them in). That may change.
These days I only use two folders in Evernote – tagged and untagged. I tried different things, but I wanted to go simple. I may break out projects into Evernote folders, with a dashboard like you have. I email in a lot of notes, and I try to identify them with a hashtag and a label. I spend a small bit of time each week tagging stuff to go in the right folder.
Anyway – thanks for jogging my brain.
Tom
using evernote, nowhere near as organized as your setup – I have a note per project (sometimes multiple notes per project) with task lists/checkboxes/etc.
The Hit List sounds like it would be the most useful to me, but I'm wary of the amount of effort it would take to maintain it (I tend to write things down as they happen or come to mind, and dunno if I'm organized enough for a daily task list with carry-overs from the day before). I kind of have a running hitlist that gets new stuff added and old stuff checked off as I go (whole list carries over day to day) and I also keep track of pending conversations via draft emails. That said, I can see how there'd be a lot of value to me personally in having the hit list chopped up into daily segments (historical review, in particular). I may give that a shot now.
Assuming you're using Windows, you could create a new note every day (or
append it to a hit-list-style note). I'd get one of the free text
substitution programs out there (like Texter) and create a hotkey to insert
the current date/time. Drop that into the next line of the note along with
the project you're working on and you've got a decent little lo-fi time
tracker, I think.
Well, as far as noting things as they occur to you, both OSX and Windows
versions of Evernote ship with a global hotkey that drops you right into the
body of a new note in the active notebook, so you could very easily go from
thinking to writing. Also, using the @myEN deal, writing quick notes through
Twitter is pretty damn effective, too.
It's definitely an investment to get things dialed in like this, but I'm
finding it to be extremely nice and easy to work with. I'm definitely
thinking of the system as an organic thing that will grow/shrink/reshape as
I use it more and work out any kinks I find. But I spend so much damn time
in Evernote anyway that it just makes sense for me to put it to even better
use
I've been putting off a new toothbrush purchase for months – but hey, it keeps those pesky friends from coming by and bugging me with their stimulating conversation and alcohol. Who needs that, anyway?
And the alligator vaccine thing was more of a joke than anything except can you please tell me where I can find some because my leg is killing me.
Brett,
I, too, am trying to wrap my head around this. There are a lot of moving parts here that seem to use parts of Evernote I'm not familiar with.
First, my setup: I'm running Evernote 3.1 on a Win 7 64-bit </brag> machine for about the next five minutes, then I'm upgrading Evernote to 3.5. I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap A300 [Windows: http://bit.ly/8LtGNR Mac: http://bit.ly/7ST8kq Review: Go get one now!]. I love the Web clipper, but don't do much with the desktop version's capture capabilities, and I've not hand-entered a note beyond early noodling to see what EN would do with typed and handwritten input (I have an older Cintiq, so I have some pen input </more brag>). I'm a lot better about keeping things in subject-oriented separate notebooks but suck at tagging (not only in EN, but generally). The Twitter interface has also only been used to test whether it works in the most basic sense. I do more with my not-very-smart phone, though sometimes the device or Sprint decides I mean to send the stupid, proprietary Picture Mail rather than a regular e-mail with attachments. I've been playing with PixelPipe here lately (it pushes content from an e-mail to a zillion sites, check it out) and it does a good job of getting content to EN.
Second, some questions: Just so I'm clear, the project list is a mixed bag of single- and multi-step items? Would all multistep items have a dashboard, or only some? How is the hitlist created? Are you able to direct new mobile note into folders or tag them on the fly or do you have to log in the online site or use the desktop client to manipulate them?
Finally, some observations: Like I said in my tweet, I'm a big user of Remember the Milk. There is so much to love about it: a robust quick add microformat that lets me set just about anything about the tasks from a single line of text. Folders and tags, and saved searches (which are on EN, but the difference is UI; RTM's Web interface is great and pretty much obviates the need for a desktop client–n.b. the relative compactness of the data handled also plays a big role in not needing a desktop client). Notifications. Predictable printing.
I think EN could be viable if I were still in paper mode (and don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with using paper or EN for whatever–as someone commented before: build a system that works for YOU), if you're more likely to write notes with task and project lists as text than deal with them as chunks of information . And I certainly wish there were a way to associate EN notes with RTM tasks (and with Google Calendar entries), like a per-note URL at least. Where RTM kicks ass is in adding attributes to notes, searching for them a zillion ways to Sunday, and moving them around in your deadline-space. Which is, I think, because EN is a notetaking enterprise from the ground up, and while it will let you type things in, including simple tasks, it's not equipped to do serious manipulation of tasks qua tasks. And maybe it shouldn't be and a bridge between it and RTM (and GCal) makes far more sense than building in serious task and project management capabilities.
By the way, love the “Wrinkles and Scales” idea (but your sense of humor appeals to me anyway); maybe we should find some roadside land in Florida and get some focus groups going?