UNTETHERED WITH EVERNOTE

BY

STACEY HARMON

AND KRISTI WILLIS

© Copyright 2014 Stacey Harmon and Kristi Willis. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of any part of this work by any means without permission of the publisher is unlawful. Purchase of this product does not grant you resell rights.This work is copyrighted. No part of this work may be copied or changed in any format, sold or used in any way under any circumstances without express written permission.

Reproduction or translation of any part of this work by any means without permission of the publishers is unlawful.

EVERNOTE, the Evernote Elephant logo and REMEMBER EVERYTHING are trademarks of Evernote Corporation and are used under a license.

This work is not written by or endorsed by Evernote Corporation or any other person, company or product recommend in the material.

Copyright, Disclaimer and Terms of Use Agreement

The authors and publishers of this work and any accompanying materials have used their best efforts in preparing it. The author and publisher make no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy, applicability, fitness or completeness of the contents of this material. The information contained in this manual is strictly for educational purposes. Therefore, if you wish to apply ideas contained in this work, you accept full responsibility for your actions.

Version 20140501

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Get Untethered?

Meet Stacey

Meet Kristi

How the Book Is Organized

Chapter 1: Building Your Toolkit

Installing Evernote

Outfitting the Rest of Your Toolbox

Untethered Toolkit

Chapter 2: Organizing Your Evernote System

Evernote Organization Basics

Creating an Evernote Inbox

A GTD Approach to Organizing in Evernote

The Fewer, Bigger Buckets Approach to Organizing in Evernote

Untethered Toolkit

Chapter 3: Mastering the Fundamentals of Evernote

Moving, Copying and Merging Notes

Searching

Shortcuts vs. Reminders

Note Linking

Sharing

Keyboard Shortcuts

Chapter 4: Smooth Operations

Business Planning

Reconciling Receipts and Expenses

Lead Management

Task Management

Untethered Toolkit

Chapter 5: Effortless Teamwork

Key Collaboration Tools

Creating Team Synergy

Untethered Toolkit

Chapter 6: Happy Customers

Organizing Client Work Internally

Sharing with Non-Evernote Users

Creating a Collaborative Workspace

Curating Content

Chapter 7: Prioritizing the Personal

Tracking Personal Goals

Keeping Tabs on Your Health

Planning Your Next Great Escape

The Inspired Foodie

Making a Smooth Move

More Ideas for Prioritizing Your Personal Life

Untethered Toolkit

Chapter 8: Starting Your Untethered Journey

Key Questions as You Build Your System

Appendix A: Backing Up Your Evernote Data

Appendix B: Implementing Workflows

Workflows Covered in the Book

Creating Your Own Workflows

Appendix C: Recommended Applications and Tools

Evernote Companion Applications

Third-Party Applications

Third-Party Hardware

Gratitude

Special thanks from Stacey

Special thanks from Kristi

About the Authors

Stacey Harmon

Kristi Willis

Introduction: Why Get Untethered?

The work world today doesn’t bear much resemblance to that of our parents. More and more of us are striking out on our own – self-employed, entrepreneurs, freelancers, micropreneurs – whatever label you want to put on it. We are leaving corporate jobs with regular paychecks because we want the freedom to pursue our purpose, making a difference for our customers and ourselves.

We work from home offices, co-working spaces, airports, coffee shops and park benches. We are as likely to use our tablet or phone as our computers and we want everything we need at our fingertips. We don’t have many employees or a big infrastructure and we need tools that are reliable, flexible and easy to use. We are, so to speak, untethered from a traditional workspace.

In his book The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau calls this new workforce “unexpected entrepreneurs.” We, the authors, became unexpected entrepreneurs several years ago, and, if you are reading this book, you probably are too. Like us, you may struggle with getting products or services to customers in a timely manner while also keeping up with the deluge of receipts, paperwork and details that go along with owning your own business, especially when it’s a one person shop.

The challenge is that something as simple as trying to find a receipt or pulling up your medical history at the doctor’s office can derail your day, taking you down the rabbit hole of digging through stacks of paper or scrambling to find what you need. And, we don’t have time for that.

We turned to the same tool as a cornerstone of our system for keeping up with all the odds and ends, managing projects, sharing work with clients and, in turn, being more productive – Evernote. We rely on it for everything from tracking receipts to documenting client needs to making our grocery lists.

Evernote is a cloud-based software that lets you store information of many different formats in a centralized database. It is available on most computer and smartphone platforms and synchronizes the web-based copy of your data with your local device so that you always have what you need at your fingertips. Evernote also integrates seamlessly with a number of other tools that we use, making it the backbone of our systems. It doesn’t hurt that the software is free at the Basic level and is only a small fee for the more advanced Premium service.

In this book, we describe how we use Evernote to run our businesses. As you read our workflows, you may quickly identify areas that eliminate hurdles for you or identify tools to solve a different type of challenge. For example:

Do you have a place to centralize your business planning for the year?

Are you drowning in receipts or stacks of paper?

Where do you organize and manage your business leads?

Is your task management system written on a scratch piece of paper or a legal pad?

Do you struggle to get your team on the same page?

Are your projects scattered in multiple locations?

Are you bombarding your clients with email to keep them updated on your progress?

Do you find yourself in meetings needing something that is back at your desk?

Do you need to get untethered?

Our goal is to give you a kick-start to digitize your business with Evernote so that you can worry less about where you put something, invest more energy in delivering brilliant work and have peace of mind that everything is handled. Here’s a little bit more about who we are and what we do to help you better understand how and why we approach work the way we do.

Meet Stacey

Organizing makes me happy. In my baby book, my Mom wrote, “At four and a half, Stacey loved to put blocks all out on floor and try different ways to reorganize them back into the box. She spent hours doing that instead of building with them.” Clearly, the desire to organize is part of my nature.

I also have a history of embracing technologies early on that blossom into mainstream acceptance. I’ve combined these two abilities into a career as an independent consultant, advising business owners on how to capture value from digital transformation, and also as a speaker, teaching digital marketing strategy and productivity with Evernote at events across the country.

Harmon Enterprises (HE) consists of me, a part-time assistant and a team of independent contractors who help support my clients and business development. I travel often for work and the tools and systems that I use support the ability for me to work from wherever I am, on any device available to me (usually my MacBook Air or iPhone).

My avid adoption of Evernote began when I read Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen. The philosophy in the book resonated deeply with my organized nature and a light bulb went off for me. I realized I could deploy a digital GTD system in Evernote to manage the nearly paralyzing amount of competing to-dos I was attempting to manage in my business and life. My productivity changed from that day forward.

I created an Evernote notebook and task management structure that serves as my trusted life management system. I constantly work my Evernote GTD system – actively moving around notes and next actions as my priorities ebb and flow. I rarely use tags, relying instead on my defined notebook structure and the robust search features of Evernote to locate what I’m looking for.

Everything, and I mean everything, that I can digitize goes into Evernote – both professional and personal. This centralization allows me the freedom to work from wherever I want, and the flexibility to deliver for my clients from any location. Most meaningful to me is the sanity and focus that my Evernote GTD system gives me as I navigate the often overwhelming demands of entrepreneurship and life.

My office is now with me wherever I go; all I need is the Internet to work. I love the freedom of not being tethered to a desk and knowing I can always deliver for my clients.

Meet Kristi

A friend recently described me as a “Jane of all trades.” I have a background in technology, learning and development and as a writer. I am passionate about technology, and am equally zealous about food. You might catch me leading a team facilitation workshop, helping a client design their Learning Management System, interviewing a chef or farmer for a food magazine or teaching other writers how to use Evernote. I have an intense curiosity and a thirst for constant learning, and the realms of tech and food feed both.

At my company, KW Solutions Group (KWSG), my part-time assistant and I are constantly changing hats, which can be a little hectic. I travel often and am as likely to work from a client site, coffee shop or my coworking space as my desk at home. I love the flexibility of being my own boss, but certainly wasn’t prepared for the administrative load that came with striking out on my own.

Fortunately, I’d been an Evernote user for about a year before I took the leap to entrepreneur. I initially used Evernote for personal items, organizing my recipes and workouts so that I had them with me wherever I traveled. At work, I used Evernote for taking notes in meetings and at conferences, but I didn’t maximize the true power of Evernote until I started my own company. 

Evernote serves as my virtual notebook and file cabinet no matter where I am and it works on all five of my devices (MacBook Pro, iMac, Lenovo laptop, iPad and iPhone). I use Evernote to organize my projects, collect my research, share with clients and colleagues and store all of my reference material. In combination with my email and calendar, it has become part of my technology toolkit that I can’t live without.

I’ve integrated Evernote into my workday in a variety of ways, combining my paper and digital worlds. Not only do I have it installed on each device, but I also carry an Evernote Moleskine notebook, from which I can snap photos of the handwritten pages and transfer them as searchable text to Evernote. I also frequently use the Evernote Post-it Notes when I storyboard or facilitate work sessions.

Moving to a more digital system has not been an overnight process for me, but I have found it to be a powerful tool worth the investment of time. I loathe filing and paperwork; that type of administrative work makes me feel like I have on a straightjacket. Having a tool where I can put things and search to find them easily has freed up my time so that I can work on the things that stoke my creative fire.

How the Book Is Organized

While we have much in common – small business owners who value flexible, easy to use systems and Evernote devotees – we also have our own styles and work habits. We don’t believe there is only one way to organize your work.

Stacey relies heavily on a structured system while Kristi prefers to have fewer places to look for things. Our hope is that by writing this together you’ll find a style that appeals to you, or something in the middle, and apply that to how you work best. This book isn’t a prescription, but a framework for how you can use Evernote and a solid set of cloud-based tools to make it easier to focus on the work you love as an independent entrepreneur and spend less time on the tedious administrative tasks.

The first three chapters help you install Evernote, pick your complementary tools and navigate the essential features of the program. We then guide you through how you can use Evernote to manage your day-to-day business operations, collaborate with your team, work effortlessly with clients and organize your personal life.

We’ll explore how to use Evernote for:

Business planning

Organizing your receipts and expenses

Lead management

Task management

Organizing team meetings

Documenting team processes and procedures

Managing internal projects

Sharing information with clients

Building a collaborative workspace

Curating content for clients

An array of personal uses that help simplify life

We have included the personal life section because we have found that if you don’t have a good strategy for organizing your personal information, it can interrupt and disrupt your business life. And, if you are newer to Evernote or aren’t an entrepreneur, some of the personal examples may feel more accessible than the business cases.

Each workflow spells out different considerations and Evernote features that help you solve that challenge. Where one of us has a different style, we present an alternate approach. Our hope is that you can apply our techniques directly to your work or extrapolate how you might use the tools in a different fashion to tackle a similar situation.

At the core of each process is a list of questions we ask each time we have a new process to implement, problem to solve or new client to onboard. We point to these items as we guide you through each example, but these considerations are not unique to these solutions. You can use this list of questions to address any challenge you may encounter, as you get untethered.

How is the information organized or stored now?

What type of searches do you need to perform often?

What types of information are you collecting (PDFs, pictures, audio files, etc.) and is it physical or digital?

What works well with the current process?

What bottlenecks or inefficiencies, if any, currently occur with this process? Where are the holes?

How many notes do you expect to create for this topic or process? A lot or a few?

Is the work transactional or functional? For example, a real estate agent has a large number of clients who they deal with for a finite period of time (transactional) where as a marketing consultant might have fewer clients for a longer period of time for ongoing maintenance (functional).

Do you need to share the information with others? If so, who? Are they internal or external? Are they Evernote users?

When and where do you need to be able to access the information? Only in the office? On the road? Using a mobile device?

How sensitive is your data?

With each workflow we have included basic instruction on how to perform the technical steps and, since technology changes quickly, a hyperlink to the Evernote Knowledge Base article on that topic at the end of each chapter. If the steps in the book don’t seem to match up with what you see on your screen, please use the link to find the latest steps.

The book does not represent an exhaustive description of all of the features in Evernote, and we admit, it’s stilted towards the Mac version, which typically receives new features first. The software is robust and we encourage you to explore all that it has to offer. Our intent is to present the tools we feel are most important to our work, knowing that you will adapt your own style as you work with Evernote.

One more quick disclaimer: we don’t work for Evernote. We are unpaid Ambassadors, or passionate power users with a title, who receive a few perks throughout the year, but Evernote does not directly compensate us.

Now let’s go get untethered!

Chapter 1: Building Your Toolkit

Before diving into how we use Evernote, we want to make sure you have everything you need setup and ready to go. In this chapter, we help you setup Evernote and build your untethered toolkit, the cloud-based apps that we recommend so that you can work seamlessly from anywhere.

If you are new to Evernote, you need to create an account and install the software before jumping into the next sections. If you are already an Evernote user, make sure you have all of the essential tools to use the extensive power of Evernote and to take full advantage of our workflows.

Use this list to help you navigate to the sections you need to implement. Click on the link after each item to skip to that section.

Have you created an Evernote account? If not, create an account.

Have you reviewed what type of account you are using and that it meets your needs? If not, review the account types.

Have you installed the Evernote desktop software? If not, install the desktop program now.

Have you installed the Evernote Web Clipper? If not, install the Evernote Web Clipper for each browser you use regularly.

Have you installed the Evernote app on your mobile device(s)? If not, download and install the mobile app for your phone and tablet.

Have you installed the companion applications or third-party tools on your desktop and mobile devices? Review our recommendations and install the tools that help you the most in your business. If the tool is available for the desktop and mobile devices, consider installing it on both.

Installing Evernote

To get the most out of Evernote, create an account and install three different components: the desktop software, the web clipper for your internet browser and the app on each of your mobile devices.

Picking the right type of account

When you create an Evernote account, you receive the free or Basic version. You may want to upgrade to one of the paid versions of the application depending on your needs. Following is a description of each version and an overview of its features.

Evernote Basic is the free version and it is sufficient for a large number of users. If you are using Evernote primarily for personal note taking, storing ideas and to digitize your paper, then Evernote Basic should meet your needs. You can upload 60 MB of data each month and create individual notes up to 25 MB in size.

The Premium account ($5/month or $45/year) gives you more advanced features for sharing and collaboration. These accounts have higher limits (1 GB of uploaded data per month and a maximum note size of 100 MB), increased security with the Passcode Lock feature and the ability to make notebooks available offline on mobile devices. Premium users can also share and collaborate on notes and notebooks with other premium users, search PDF files stored in notes and use the Presentation Mode feature to share ideas in a meeting.

If you have documents, notebooks and intellectual property that you share with employees and contractors, you may want to consider an Evernote Business account ($10/month/user). With Evernote Business, you create notes and notebooks that are stored in your company’s Evernote database. If an employee leaves the company, their Business notes stay behind.

Each user can upload 2 GB of data into their personal notebooks, as well as their business notebooks, each month. Evernote Business also has an administrator interface for managing notebooks, user permissions and user accounts.

We both used the free version of Evernote for several years before transitioning to a paid account. If you have an assistant or contractors that you work with regularly, we highly recommend that you, at a minimum, upgrade to a Premium account in order to be able to easily collaborate.

We have both recently transitioned to Evernote Business to ensure that our company-related notes aren’t scattered across multiple accounts as we work with different people. If you are a one or two person shop, Evernote Premium is your best bet and you can transition to a Business account as your company grows or you develop a need to maintain data ownership over your business notes.

Evernote
Basic

Evernote Premium

Evernote
Business

Cost

Free

$5 per month or $45 per year

$10 per user per month

Data upload limits

60 MB of data each month

1 GB of data each month

2 GB of data each month separately in personal and business notebooks; entire collection is limited to 40 GB of data upload monthly

Note and attachment size limit

25 MB

100 MB

100 MB

Number of notes

100,000 notes

100,000 notes

500,000 notes per account

Number of notebooks

250

250

250 personal + 5,000 business

Offline notebooks

No

Yes

Yes

Others can modify in shared notebooks

No

Yes (if they also have a Premium account)

Yes (if they also have a Premium account)

Presentation mode

No

Yes

Yes

Create an account

The first step is to create an Evernote account. If you aren’t sure which account type to sign up for, start with the free one and you can upgrade later.

Go to http://www.evernote.com.

Click the Sign Up button.

Select your account type.

Follow the prompts to complete the registration.

When you create a new account, Evernote starts a download for the desktop software. You can use the web-based version of the application without the desktop version, but the web version does not have as many features and shortcuts. To get the most out of Evernote, install the program on your desktop. Follow the prompts in your web browser or skip ahead to the instructions on installing the desktop version for more help.

With your Evernote account, you receive a unique email address that you can use to email notes into your database. Add this email address to your contact list to make it simple to forward emails to Evernote.

To find your Evernote email address, on the Mac choose Evernote>Account Info from the menu. On a Windows PC, choose Tools>Account Info. Your email address appears in the Account Info dialog box.

Dedicated Evernote email address appears in the Account Info dialog box

Install the desktop program

Install the desktop version of Evernote on each of the computers that you use. For example, Kristi has a MacBook Pro, iMac and a Windows laptop. She has the desktop version of Evernote installed on each computer.

To install the desktop version of Evernote:

Go to http://www.evernote.com.

Click on the Products menu and click on the Download button next to the Evernote option.

Follow the instructions to complete the download and installation.

When you install the desktop version of Evernote on your computer, the program stores a local copy of your note database on the hard drive. Periodically, Evernote synchronizes the local copy of your database with your web-based database on their servers. The local copy is particularly helpful when you want to work offline.

Install the Evernote Web Clipper

One of our favorite features in Evernote is the ability to clip the contents of web pages to a note using the Evernote Web Clipper. If you regularly use more than one Internet browser, download the Evernote Web Clipper for each browser you use.

To download the Evernote Web Clipper:

Go to http://www.evernote.com.

Click on the Products menu and choose Evernote Web Clipper.

Follow the instructions for installing the Web Clipper for that browser.

Repeat the process as needed in each browser that you use regularly.

Install the app on your mobile devices

One of the most powerful things about Evernote is the ability to take notes on the go. To take full advantage of this feature, install Evernote on each of your mobile devices, following the instructions for the app store on your device to download the Evernote app.

Other Evernote tools

Evernote authors a number of companion applications that we reference throughout the book and you may want to download depending on your needs.

Skitch: Capture and mark up screen snaps, images and PDF files with basic drawing tools.

Penultimate: Digital handwriting app.

Evernote Food: Search and store recipes, explore restaurants and capture meals.

Evernote Clearly: Create a distraction-free screen in your web browser for easier reading.

There is a plethora of third-party apps designed to integrate with Evernote. We refer to several of them during the course of the book and we recommend that you explore the Evernote App Center for software that could be helpful to you.

Outfitting the Rest of Your Toolbox

While Evernote is a primary tool for both of us, an independent entrepreneur can’t live by Evernote alone. To complete our digital toolboxes, we look for tools that are cloud-based, meaning that we can access the information anywhere, from any device and, when possible, integrate with Evernote.

We both use Google Apps for our email, calendar and document management and Google Chrome as our primary browser. The Google tools are affordable (again free and paid versions are available) and have Evernote specific shortcuts.

Following are a few other tools that we find helpful and work well with Evernote. We cannot stress enough the importance of having a scanner, particularly one that inputs directly to Evernote.

Function

Stacey’s Tool

Kristi’s Tool

Scanner

Canon P215

Fujitsu ScanSnap s1100

Screen captures

SnagIt

Skitch

Digital signature

HelloSign & HelloFax

HelloSign & HelloFax

Social media management

HootSuite

HootSuite

Digital retrievers (software that aggregates and sends information to Evernote)

FileThis

IFTTT

Expense management

Expensify

You can download the most current version of the toolkit from the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources.

Summary

To get a solid start on the road to being untethered, make a list of the types of software you need and look for cloud-based solutions that integrate with Evernote. Having Evernote as the main repository for your work gives you freedom from little scraps of paper and peace of mind that everything is in one place.

Untethered Toolkit

Get Going

Create an Evernote account.

Add your Evernote email address to your contacts.

Install the desktop software on each of your computers.

Install the Evernote Web Clipper for each browser that you use frequently.

Install the mobile app.

Install the Evernote companion apps.

Install or purchase any necessary third-party tools. If you don’t have a scanner, order one now!

Dig Deep

In this chapter, we introduced the following tools. You can read more about them by clicking the links below:

Evernote desktop application

Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote mobile and companion apps

Third-party tools that integrate with Evernote

Chapter 2: Organizing Your Evernote System

Evernote stores your information digitally like you might store paper in a file cabinet or on a bookshelf. You add information in individual notes. Those notes can be stored in different notebooks and the notebooks can be grouped together in stacks. You can add keywords to notes through tags or use naming conventions to group notes together. Most importantly, because it is digital, you can quickly search your notes to find what you need.

In this chapter, we take you through the essential tools in Evernote for creating and organizing your notes. In particular, we demonstrate how to:

Create notes, notebooks and stacks.

Use tags or naming conventions to add keywords to notes.

Quickly access notes using shortcuts and reminders.

Navigate between notes using note links and table of contents notes.

Copy and move notes.

Search your notes.

Use keyboard shortcuts to work more quickly with your notes.

As we guide you through these tools, we show you examples of how we have organized our Evernote systems. Organizational styles are very personal and you should create a structure that feels comfortable for you. You might like a very structured notebook system like Stacey, prefer to have fewer notebooks and rely more on tags like Kristi or want something in between.

Evernote Organization Basics

Using Evernote, you can create notes that contain text, audio, graphics and attachments. Each note is stored in a notebook. By default, your Evernote account contains one notebook. Evernote considers this your “default” notebook. You can change your default notebook in the program preferences.

Use one of the following techniques to create a note:

Click or tap the New Note button.

On the desktop version, choose File>New Note from the menu.

On the Mac, press Command+N.

On Windows, press Ctrl+N.

Note creation options

For each new note, you do the following:

Designate the notebook where you want to store it.

Add a meaningful title.

Create contents in the note body.

Note components on desktop application

For more details on how to create a note from email or using the Evernote Web Clipper, visit the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources.

New note on iOS

You can add text, pictures, audio and file attachments to a note. You can format your notes with bullets, numbering or check lists, add tables and use mark up to annotate the note.

How many notes you can add, or upload, each month is determined by the type of account you have. See Chapter One for more details on the monthly upload limits for each account type. There is no overall storage limit for your Evernote account, just a limit on the monthly upload capacity.

When you want to organize similar notes together, you can create additional notebooks. You may also want to create a notebook to share a group of notes with others or to make a set of notes available offline (when you don’t have internet access) from your mobile device. For example, if you are going to be on a plane with no WiFi, you may want to set a notebook to be available offline so that you can work on it while you are in the air.

To create a notebook:

Click on the Notebook List icon.

Click the New Notebook button.

Add a name for the notebook and press Enter.

You can organize notebooks into notebook stacks, like putting similar notebooks together on one shelf. For example, we both have our finances and client projects organized into their own stacks. You don’t store individual notes in a notebook stack; it’s just a way to group notebooks.

Kristi’s stacks

To create a Stack:

Click on the Notebook List icon.

Drag one of the notebooks you want to add to the stack on top of one of the other notebooks you want to include in the stack.

The stack is automatically named for the destination notebook (the one you dropped the other notebook on top of). To rename the stack, right- or Control-click on the stack and choose Rename Stack from the pop-up menu.

Enter a new name and press Enter.

Tags allow you to add keywords to a note that may not appear in the text of the note. Tags can be applied to any note and allow you to associate that keyword across notes in different notebooks. For example, Kristi adds an expense category tag that corresponds with her chart of accounts to all of her receipt notes. If she searches for one of the expense tags, she can see all of the notes for that category, regardless of the year of the purchase.

Tag in a note

You can create a tag by typing the name of the new tag in the Tag section of the note or by clicking on the Tags list and clicking the New Tag button.

Creating a new tag from the Tags list

Establishing a naming convention for your notes is another helpful way to keep them organized. For example, as we were drafting the workflows for this book, we added the author’s initials to the end of the note title to clarify the items written by a particular person.

Sample note naming convention

You can also use naming conventions to force a particular sort order on notes, notebooks or stacks. Adding a period or other symbol to the beginning of the name sorts that item to the top. Stacey uses a numbering system to sort her notebooks and stacks in the desired order.

Using naming conventions to force a sort order on notebooks

You can use all or some of these techniques in your system. For example, Stacey uses a detailed notebook and stack system, relies heavily on naming conventions, but doesn’t use tags often. Kristi also uses notebooks and stacks and integrates tags as needed.

Creating an Evernote Inbox

There are a number of ways to send or clip notes to your Evernote system. Some of those methods let you designate a destination notebook, and others add the note to your default notebook. We recommend using your default notebook like a wire basket inbox, collecting notes that you later process to the proper notebook.

We renamed our default notebook “.Inbox,” using the period at the beginning of the notebook name to force it to the top of the notebook list for faster access. You can see an example of this naming technique in the picture in the previous section on naming conventions.

While we both use a notebook as an inbox, our approach to how we use it is different. Stacey only collects in her inbox, centralizing everything in one place and processing from that inbox throughout the day, making decisions about where to best file notes, and logging any action items related to notes. If something needs to be retained, whether it is an idea she captured in a photo or an email that has come in, she puts it in the inbox and then moves it to the appropriate notebook. Stacey enjoys this type of active, organized filing and it plays an integral role in her productivity and project management.

Kristi on the other hand, clips or emails things directly to notebooks when she can, and uses the inbox as a catch-all for tools that don’t let her pick a notebook. For example, when clipping an event to post on her blog calendar using the Evernote Web Clipper, she stores those directly to her “Events to Post” notebook. However, if she is emailing a note and can’t remember the exact notebook name, she sends the notes in the inbox to be sorted later.

Stacey processes her inbox multiple times each day. Kristi processes her inbox once a day. We have different approaches, but yield similar results.

How we handle our respective inboxes gives you a peek into how our organizational styles vary. Stacey prefers a very structured notebook system built around the methodology of the book Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen. Kristi, on the other hand, uses what she calls the “fewer, bigger buckets” strategy, creating notebooks sparingly for major content areas, when needed for sharing purposes or to have those notebooks available offline.

You may find that one style appeals to you more than the other, that you like a mixture of the two or that you have your own method that works best. In the next two sections, we present our structures as a way to help support the other examples in the book and to give you ideas of how you might best setup your system.

A GTD Approach to Organizing in Evernote

Inspired by the GTD methodology, Stacey created stacks and notebooks using a numbering convention so that her projects and project reference appear at the top of her notebook list (1), notes supporting her day-to-day work appear in the middle (2-4) and her reference notebooks are at the bottom of the list (7).

Stacey’s Tickler stack

Because Evernote allows for any form of digital media to be associated with a note, she has scanned or photographed many of her paper files and converted them into digital Evernote notebooks that are grouped in a stack named “7 Reference Material.” She stores items like her insurance information, inactive or past client files and car repair history in a corresponding notebook in the “Reference Material” stack.

Stacey’s expanded reference stack

If she only has one or two notes related to a topic that she wants to archive or file away, she stores that note in a more generic reference notebook, such as “Personal” or “Misc.”

The reference notebooks are not often part of her active day-to-day operations, but they are available to her when she needs them and save her time when she is not physically in the office, but needs something that historically she kept in her filling cabinet. For example, when she went to get her new Texas driver’s license, she was able to pull up a bill and print it out to verify her current address for the clerk.

Using this system, she has reduced her physical storage needs from ten to four small drawers. She is in the process of continuing to digitize her physical storage and hopes to be down to one filing drawer in the year to come. The cabinet holds things that can’t be digitized, like her passport and printed marketing materials.

Even though she has a very strong structure for her “Reference” stack, she still relies heavily on the search feature of Evernote. She enjoys the hybrid of being able to find things using a notebook structure that supports how she thinks, but also using the search parameters should her filing system fail her, or a note’s content spans topics qualifying it to be stored in more than one notebook – like a note about a client project.  

The Fewer, Bigger Buckets Approach to Organizing in Evernote

Unlike Stacey, Kristi does not enjoy filing and prefers a structure that lets her spend as little time doing that sort of work as possible. She finds it easier to have fewer larger notebooks than many smaller notebooks. Because of this, she use tags to group notes together on major topics, particularly when that topic may span across multiple notebooks.

Kristi has created a notebook for each client, magazine or blog with whom she works, a set of working notebooks for the day-to-day business of her company, a library for reference articles and a set of personal notebooks.

Example of Kristi’s notebooks

Beyond this structure, Kristi only creates new notebooks when she:

has accumulated many notes on a subject that now deserves its own notebook, like creating a notebook for a new magazine she is writing for.

wants to share the notebook with someone else, like one of her learning and development clients.

needs the notebook to be available offline on her mobile device. 

Kristi does not create a notebook for every project unless she needs to share information about that project, not the rest of the client notes, with someone else. Instead, if she is starting a new client project, she stores the notes in the main client notebook and creates a tag for that project so that she can quickly find the related notes using search.

For example, when she writes a story for a new magazine, she might not immediately create a notebook for them. She typically waits until she’s written several stories and knows that the work with that outlet will continue before she creates a notebook. In the meantime, she stores the notes in a notebook called “Other Writing Outlets” and tags the notes with the name of the magazine.

Example of notes using a tag for an infrequent client

Kristi has grouped her notebooks into stacks to make it easy for her to find what she needs. All of her money management notebooks are in a “Finances” stack, personal notebooks are in a “Kristi” stack, general business in a “KWSG” stack, current clients in one stack and past clients in an archive. The notebooks and stacks give her enough structure that she can find things manually if she needs to, but not so many notebooks that she feels overwhelmed digging through them.

Kristi’s stacks

Which organizational style is right? Both. The right style is the one that feels comfortable for you and allows you to find what you need quickly. For example, if you have a car, you might, like Stacey, create a notebook for the documents about your vehicle. Or, like Kristi, you might store those documents in a personal notebook with other items and use an “automotive” tag.

Summary

There is no “right” way to set up your Evernote structure. You want a system that feels comfortable to you and supports your needs, without feeling cumbersome. Take a few minutes to consider what type of organization system feels most comfortable to you. Jot down your list of clients or subject areas that you need to track (notebooks) and then group those into major topic areas (stacks). Decide how you might want to use tags or a naming convention to add keywords to your notes.

Be flexible. Over time, you may need to tweak and refine your system. Luckily, Evernote makes that painless to do.

Untethered Toolkit

Get Going

Create your notebooks:

Notebooks for each business function (admin, finance, marketing)

Notebooks for each major client or customer

Personal notebooks

Create your stacks and organize the notebooks in the appropriate stacks.

Create tags, if needed, to group notes across or within notebooks.

Dig Deep

In this chapter, we introduced the following tools. You can read more about the details of how to use them by clicking the links below:

Creating a note (Mac, Windows)

Creating notebooks, stacks and tags (Mac, Windows)

Chapter 3: Mastering the Fundamentals of Evernote

In addition to planning out your organizational system, it is helpful to master some of the fundamental tools in Evernote. This primer introduces you to these key features that are illustrated in practice through Stacey and Kristi’s workflows in the following chapters. Note that your version of Evernote (free, premium or business) and operating system (Mac or Windows) may impact your ability to use some of the features.

Evernote regularly adds new functionality to the software. Be sure to visit their Support page for the latest features and how-to guides.

Moving, Copying and Merging Notes

Periodically, you may need to move a note to a different notebook or duplicate the content in a new note so that you can reuse it, like for a grocery list or packing checklist.

Moving notes

There are a variety of ways to move notes in the desktop Evernote application. First, when you have a note open on the screen, you can select a new notebook name from the Notebook drop-down list.

Moving a note by changing the notebook name

You can also drag a note from the note list to the name of the desired notebook in the sidebar if you are viewing your Notebook list. (View>Sidebar Options>Show Notebook List)

Moving a note by dragging it

You can also move a note using the Move to Notebook command. Right- or Control-click on the note, then choose Move to Notebook on the Mac or Move Note on Windows from the pop-up menu.

Moving a note using the mouse and keyboard shortcuts

You can move several notes at once by highlighting the notes you want to move and using the Move to Notebook button that appears on the multi-note selection screen.

Moving multiple notes with Move to Notebook

You can copy an entire note to a new note. This feature is particularly useful when you create templates for notes that you use frequently, like a contact lead or meeting agenda template.

Copying notes

Similar to moving a note, right- or Control-click on the note you want to copy and choose Copy to Notebook on the Mac or Copy Note on Windows from the pop-up menu.

Copying a note

Merging notes

Sometimes you have several related notes that you might want to merge into one note. When you merge notes, Evernote creates a new note, and then copies the contents of all the selected notes into that new note. The original, pre-merge notes are moved to the trash and the new, merged note remains.

To merge notes:

Select the notes you want to merge. You can use the CTRL- or Control-click method to select non-contiguous notes.

Click the Merge button on the multi-note selection pane that appears on the right-hand side of the Evernote window.

Caution: There is no un-merge feature. If you accidentally merge multiple notes and want to unmerge them, you either need to: 1) restore the pre-merge notes that are located in the trash, or 2) copy or cut out the individual note contents from t`he merged note and create new Evernote notes that you paste that content into.

Searching

Once you create a note, you want to be able to find it easily, and the Evernote search is fast and powerful. Evernote indexes the contents of your notes in order to allow rapid search and retrieval of your information.

The text, images and PDF files stored in a note are all indexed. If you include a photo that contains text in a note, Evernote indexes that text and includes it in your search results.

Search finds text in an image

One of Evernote’s most jaw-dropping features is the ability to index pictures of handwriting. You can take a picture of something that was handwritten, perform a search for that text and Evernote finds it, assuming the handwriting is legible!

Search finds handwritten text in an image

To perform a search:

Click in the Search Notes text box.

Enter the text you want to find.

Click on the context for where you want to search. You can choose to search everything or individual notebooks.

You can choose from a list of suggestions or recent searches.

The notes that match your search string appear to the left in the notes list.

Search context

Evernote offers several advanced search features that are very useful as your note count grows. Here are a few tips that you might find helpful:

Add quotation marks around the search phrase to find an exact match.

Restrict your search to only finding matches with the word in the title of the note by adding “intitle:” to the beginning of your search criteria.

Add search options like tags or date created by clicking on the Add Search Option button.

Save frequently used searches so that you don’t have to recreate them. On the Mac, perform the search, then choose Edit>Find>Save Search from the menu. On Windows, perform your search, and then click the Save Search icon.

Search by location using the Atlas map search. If you have location services activated on your devices, Evernote can track the location of where you created a note. You can then search your notes by map. This type of search is handy when you can remember where you were when you had an idea, but can’t seem to remember the exact phrasing you may have logged in the note. You can simply navigate to the Atlas map, locate the spot you generated the note and click through to the note.

Evernote Premium and Business users have added search power. For these account types, Evernote indexes any Microsoft Office and other attached files contained in a note. For Evernote Business users, Evernote also displays a notification if your search term appears in any shared notes located in the business notebooks.

Search features available to Premium and Business accounts

Changing the sort order of your notes is also helpful in finding what you are looking for. For example, Stacey has 68 notes that contain the phrase “Facebook pages” and she finds it helpful to view the search results by date, with the most recently updated notes at the top.

To change the sort order:

Click the View Options icon at the top of the notes list.

Choose the Sort by: option to change the sort order.

Changing the sort order

To learn more about how you can customize your view in Evernote, visit the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources.

Shortcuts vs. Reminders

For items that you use often, Evernote offers two ways to quickly access the notes: shortcuts and reminders.

Shortcuts are similar to web browser bookmarks and give you one click access to notes, notebooks, stacks, searches or tags. You might create a shortcut to a procedural note that you reference often or a notebook that you work in frequently.

Shortcuts List

Shortcuts view on the iPhone

To create a shortcut using the desktop version of Evernote, click on the item you want to create the shortcut for and drag and drop it to wherever you want it to appear in the Shortcuts list.

If you don’t see the shortcuts list on your desktop, you can turn them on by choosing View>Sidebar Options>Shortcuts from the menu.

Adding the shortcut list to the sidebar

An alternate way to draw attention to a note is to add a Reminder. Reminders act like pins that display an individual note at the top of the notes list.

Reminder in a note

When you add a reminder, you can choose to add a date, and then view the reminders in date order.

You can subscribe to email notifications for dated reminders and Evernote sends a daily email prompt of any items due that day.

To sign up for reminder email notifications:

View the Reminders section at the top of your note list.

Click the gear icon.

Choose Subscription Settings from the menu.

Check any of the notebooks for which you want to receive reminders.

You can change the view of the reminders using the Reminder settings. You can choose to sort by due date or manually change the order by dragging and dropping the notes into the desired order.

Changing the Reminder list settings

If you set a reminder in a shared notebook, everyone with access to the notebook sees the reminder and has the option to subscribe to updates about the reminder.

Note Linking

You may find it helpful to reference one note from another note. Each note contains a unique link that you can paste into another note as a hyperlink. When you click the link, Evernote takes you to the designated note.

Example of note linking

You can add note links manually by copying them or create a master note that links to several other notes using the Table of Contents feature.

To copy a note link:

Highlight the note to which you want to link.

Choose Copy>Note Link from the menu, or right- or Control-click on the note and choose Copy Note Link from the pop-up menu.

Move to the note where you want to add the link and choose Edit, Paste, or right- or Control-click and choose Paste from the pop-up menu.

You can quickly create a note that contains several note links at once by creating a Table of Contents note.

To create a Table of Contents note:

Highlight the notes that you want to appear together in the Table of Contents. You can highlight several notes in a contiguous list by clicking on the first note, holding down the Shift key on the keyboard and clicking on the last note. If the notes are scattered in the list, click on the first note, then hold down the Control key on the keyboard as you click on the remaining notes.

Click the Create Table of Contents Note button in the Preview area.

Sharing

Central to the power of Evernote is the ability to share notes and notebooks with others. You can post an entire notebook publicly on the web for the world to see, share a notebook with a limited set of people or email a single note to anyone who has an email address. You can even share your notes over social media to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You can share with other Evernote users, and with non-Evernote users alike.

Sharing notes

You can share any individual note, regardless of whether the notebook is shared.

To share a note publicly:

Click on the Share icon.

Choose whether you want to share the note publicly or privately:

Choose the Copy Share URL option to copy the URL to the clipboard. You can then paste the URL in a location others can see. Anyone with the URL and a web browser can access the note. They don’t even need to be an Evernote user.

Choose the Open URL in Browser to create a public URL that opens the shared note in a web page view.

Choose Post Share Link To option and select the desired outlet to share the note on social media.

Sharing a note publicly

To share a note privately:

Click on the Share icon in the note.

Choose Email Note from the menu.

Enter the email address(es) of the recipient(s).

Add a subject and message to the email.

Click the Send button. Note that the recipient does not need to be an Evernote user to view the note as the contents are embedded in the email.

Sharing a note by email

Sharing notebooks

When you have many notes to share, you can place them in a notebook and share the entire notebook publicly or privately.

To share a notebook privately:

Click on the Notebook List icon.

Hover over the notebook name that you want to share.

Click the Share icon.

Click the Share with Individuals button.

Enter the email address(es) for the person you want to share with, set the permissions and a note for the email notification, if desired.

Click the Share button, and then click Dismiss to close the dialog box.

To share a notebook publicly:

Click on the Notebook List icon.

Hover over the name of the notebook you want to share.

Click the Share icon.

Click the Create a Public Link button.

Highlight and copy the public link URL, then paste in whatever tool you are using to share the address.

Click the Dismiss button to close the dialog box.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Do you love shortcuts? Evernote offers an array of keyboard shortcuts to increase speed when using Evernote from your computer. We’ve referenced a few of our favorites keyboard combinations in their respective sections but there are a slew of other commands. Visit the Evernote website for a complete list of the keyboard shortcuts for your operating system. (Mac, Windows)

Summary

You don’t have to be an Evernote master just yet, but with this chapter you start to glimpse the power of Evernote. Understanding the tools that are available helps you maximize how you use the software and create more meaningful workflows.

Untethered Toolkit

Get Going

Share any notes you need to with others.

Add notes you use frequently to the shortcuts list.

Add reminders to notes you want to pin at the top of your notes list. Add dates to the reminders if they are time sensitive notes.

Create note links for any notes you want to navigate to from within another note.

Dig Deep

In this chapter, we introduced the following tools. You can read more about the details of how to use them by clicking the links below:

Searching (Mac, Windows)

Creating shortcuts (Mac, Windows)

Working with reminders (Mac, Windows)

Create note links

Using keyboard shortcuts (Mac, Windows)

Sharing notes and notebooks (Mac, Windows)

Chapter 4: Smooth Operations

Workflows for running the day-to-day business

Setting up a strong set of workflows for managing your administrative tasks means that you have more time to focus on the creative work that you love and don’t have to worry about things falling through the cracks.

As independent entrepreneurs, we find ourselves dealing with the following challenges and have solved them by creating Evernote-centric solutions. Consider how you handle the following:

Where do you store your goals for the year? Can you easily revisit them on a monthly basis to build a solid plan for your company?

Do you have a file drawer of folders stuffed with expense receipts?

Do you waste time digging for that bill you paid three months ago?

Is there a stack of business cards teetering on the edge or your desk?

When was the last time you reached out to that interested prospect you met at a conference?

Do you have a place to organize your tasks?

The backbone of your company systems should include seamless processes for managing things like receipts and finances, organizing projects and managing tasks. Evernote can help you not only consolidate everything in one place, but also ensure that you have access to it no matter where you are.

In this chapter, we walk you through how to use Evernote to:

Create and execute your business plan for the year

Store and reconcile receipts and expenses

Manage leads

Manage tasks

Business Planning

If you don’t have a plan, you’re like the boat without a rudder, aimlessly drifting with the current. While that can be interesting at times, a little annual planning can go a long way.

We use Evernote to help us create and execute our plans throughout the year. In the Fall of each year, we begin brainstorming with our respective teams on ideas for the next year – areas in which we want to grow, big ideas that we have been tossing around, partners we want to work with.

Evernote Post-it Notes are very helpful in brainstorming sessions; letting you sketch and mind map on paper, but still capture and search in your notes.

A “rough” first draft for KW Solutions Group 2014 planning

After the session, you can photograph each note using the Post-it Note photo setting in Evernote. You can either add each Post-it Note as a separate note or snapshot several Post-it Notes into the same note, capturing the session as a whole. Evernote saves the photos as a searchable digital image in the note. If you frequently use the same color Post-it Notes for certain types of notes, you can assign a notebook or tag to that color and Evernote stores it in the proper location.

We then reach out to our various friends, coaches and mentors to help us winnow out which ideas seem like the best direction for growth of the company. We add their feedback to the brainstorming notes then regroup with our teams to build a solid plan for the year.

Kristi keeps her plan in Evernote, breaking down an overarching goal or theme for the month. She and her assistant can both see the note and use it as they build out their plans in their weekly meeting. They create project notes as needed to support the year’s goals. Stacey migrates her final plan to an Excel spreadsheet.

The planning note that the messy brainstorming session transformed into

We both use these plans to create a few metrics that we track throughout the year to measure success and review the metrics on a monthly and quarterly basis. If something isn’t working, we course correct, update the plans and move forward from there.

If a mentor is supporting you in a targeted project for the year, consider creating a shared notebook to easily be able to track that work together and create accountability with the person who is coaching you.

To share a notebook:

Go to the Notebooks list.

Hover over the notebook name that you want to share.

Click the Share icon.

Click the Share with Individuals button.

Enter the email address(es) for the person you want to share with, set the permissions and a note for the email notification, if desired.

Click the Share button, then click Dismiss to close the dialog box.

Finally, if you need visual inspiration, consider creating a vision board to represent your annual goals and storing it in Evernote. Add a reminder to it with January 1st of that year as the due date so that it appears at the top of your reminders list all year long – easy to get to when you need to motivate yourself and reorient to your goals.

Stacey’s vision board note

Reconciling Receipts and Expenses

Oh, the little pieces of paper! The scraps and receipts pile up quickly and this is an area in which you can feel the fast relief of going paperless. Digitizing your finances means that you don’t have shoeboxes of receipts in your closet and can easily search for information by dates, vendors or amounts. A smartphone camera, a scanner and third-party tools like FileThis help you get everything into Evernote painlessly.

Before you create your system for tracking expenditures, consider a few key questions.

Are you tracking personal or business expenses? Or both? We track both in Evernote.

Do you track reimbursable expenses? We both do.

How much detail do you desire? As you can guess, Stacey likes a high level of detail and Kristi prefers less.

What third-party software are you using? Stacey uses Freshbooks for invoicing and Quickbooks for expense tracking and budgeting. Kristi uses Freshbooks for everything.

Are you outsourcing your data entry to a bookkeeper? Do you have a CPA? Stacey uses both and Kristi uses neither.

Once you figure out these details, you can use Evernote to organize the receipts and make sure you have reconciled your expenses in your accounting software. A digital system also gives you the flexibility to use a bookkeeper located anywhere as you can simply share access to your data regardless of location.

Since Stacey has the more elaborate system that involves an outside bookkeeper, we’ll start with her workflow as an example. Stacey organizes her finances in a stack called “HE Bookkeeping.”

Stacey’s financial stack

Here’s an overview of the process from start to finish.

Notebook

Purpose

Who its shared with

.Key & Questions

Contains information on her data entry rules, chart of accounts, and anything that is needed to keep the system working.

Assistant and Bookkeeper

.Raw Scans

Holds all new receipts, deposit slips, and paid bills, with each receipt/transaction stored in its own note.  

Assistant

Business - Incoming yyyy and Personal - Incoming yyyy

(where yyyy is the current year)

All receipt notes related to either her personal or business expenses are stored in one of these two notebooks. All notes follow a naming convention on the title.  

Assistant and Bookkeeper

Business - Processed yyyy and Personal - Processed yyyy

(where yyyy is the current year)  

These notebooks are the storage repository for all receipts/statements that have been logged into QuickBooks and act as the digital record of all expenses.

Bookkeeper

xBills to Pay

Contains all outstanding bills to pay. Stacey creates some notes manually and others are added by the service FileThis which integrates with Evernote.

Stacey adds bills to pay to the “xBills to Pay” notebook both manually and using FileThis, a third-party tool that digitally retrieves information from designated websites. Once Stacey pays the bill, she moves it to the “.Raw Scans” notebook.

When Stacey gets a receipt, she takes a picture, scans it or emails into the “.Raw Scans” notebook.

Her assistant reviews the “.Raw Scans” notebook, changes the titles of the notes to match their agreed upon naming convention and tags the notes with either the business or personal tag.

If her assistant has any questions, they address it in the body of the note and add the word QUESTION to the note title.   

Once a week, Stacey reviews all of the notes in the “.Raw Scans” notebook. She addresses any questions and changes the title to ANSWERED. She then searches for all of the notes in the notebook with the tag “business” and moves them into the “Business -Incoming” notebook. She repeats the process for the notes tagged personal.

The bookkeeper adds the expenses in the “–Incoming” notebooks to Quickbooks and inserts the word DONE at the beginning of the note title to indicate the data entry is complete. Stacey and the bookkeeper use the same QUESTION and ANSWERED naming convention to address any issues that arise during data entry.

Weekly, Stacey moves any notes with DONE in the title from the “–Incoming” notebook to the “–Processed” notebook.

Come tax time, Stacey adds a notebook to the “HE Bookkeeping” stack called “yyyy Tax Documents” and scans her 1099s and any other documents that her accountant needs. Once her taxes are paid, she moves all the notebooks for that year to a “Tax Archive” stack.

An alternate approach to organizing receipts

Kristi has a streamlined version of the receipt process since she only works with her assistant on reconciling, not a bookkeeper or accountant.

All incoming receipts (scanned, photographed or emailed) are stored in the “.Receipts to reconcile” notebook that she shares with her assistant.

Her assistant compares the receipts to the expenses in Freshbooks, entering expenses that weren’t automatically loaded from the business checking account and categorizing all expenses.

Her assistant then tags the note in Evernote with the proper expense category and moves it to the notebook for that year’s receipts (i.e. 2014). Tagging the expense with the category helps them effortlessly double-check the receipts at tax time and make sure everything adds up.

Lead Management

How do you manage your business cards and information for potential clients? While there are some great lead management tools on the market like SalesForce, which integrates with Evernote Business, Zoho or Insightly, not everyone needs that level of detail to track their leads. Using Evernote, you can create a workflow to track your business development leads during each stage of the lifecycle and grow your business.

First, create a notebook to store your Leads. Then, create a template using the table feature located in the formatting bar for the type of information you want to capture for each lead. Adding an undated reminder to the template note pins it at the top of your lead notebook so that it is easy to find and duplicate when you receive a new lead.

Stacey’s lead management template

When you have a new lead, you can use the Copy to Notebook feature to duplicate the lead template to the same notebook and change the title. Or, if you have created the lead from a web clip or email, you can copy and paste the template information to the top of your lead note.

To copy a note:

Select the note you want to copy in the notes list.

Choose Note>Copy to Notebook from the menu on a Mac or Note>Copy from the menu in Windows. You can also use the shortcut pop-up menu and right- or Control-click on the note and choose Copy to Notebook or Copy Note, depending on your operating system.

Select the notebook where you want the copy to appear.

If you have a business card, you can scan or photograph the card and then add that image to the lead note for that person. Stacey also recommends doing a quick Google search to add information beyond their basic contact details. She adds screenshots and hyperlinks to the note so that all of the lead’s information is in one place.

Consider using a naming convention for the note title or adding tags to track where the lead is in its lifecycle.

Lead

All new leads.

Active

Any lead you are in active conversation with or might be submitting a bid to.

Idle

Leads you have pursued, but the conversation has lulled.

Dead

Leads who have declined doing business with you.

In the note title, you can add the date the lead came in as an additional way to identify the lead. If you add the year first, followed by the month, then the date, you can sort the leads by title to see what order they came in.

Stacey’s lead naming convention

Weekly, review the leads notebook to determine which category they belong in and rename or change the tags as appropriate.

As you engage in ongoing communication with leads, make a call log to track the conversation and contact with the lead.

Sample lead note for a real estate client

When an active lead accepts a bid or proposal, move that lead note to a new project notebook, giving you a head start on the project plan. Don’t forget to rename the note or remove the tag so that it doesn’t get mixed in when you search for active leads. You can move a note by choosing Note>Move to Notebook from the menu.

Task Management

Keeping up with the daily to-do list and not letting things drop through the cracks can be a significant hurdle for anyone, but having your own company definitely adds a layer of complexity. If you find yourself with tasks written on notepads and pieces of scratch paper or missing deadlines, you may want to invest time in creating a better system for organizing your to-do list. We highly recommend the organization methodologies of Getting Things Done (Stacey) or Effective Edge (Kristi) for developing best practices for how you approach and manage your work.

While Evernote was not specifically created to manage tasks, you can use its tools to create a system for tracking your outstanding to-dos. Whether you create a note with a simple checklist, create task notes with reminders or implement a full GTD system, Evernote is an option for organizing what you need to do next.

A simple checklist

You can turn any note into a to-do list using the checklist feature.

To add a checkbox:

Click in the body of the note.

Click the checkbox.

When you complete the item, you can click on the box to add a check.

Reminders for tracking due dates

You can assign a due date to notes using the reminder feature. You can view your note reminders by date to see what you need to do next and you can have Evernote email you with the notes that are due that day.

To assign a dated reminder to a note:

Click the Reminder icon.

Click the Add a Date option.

Select the desired date from the pop-up calendar.

To view your notes with reminders by date:

View the Reminders section at the top of your note list.

Click the gear icon.

Choose Sort Reminders by Date from the menu. We also recommend turning off the Show Recently Completed Reminders option.

To mark a reminder complete:

View the note and click the Reminder icon.

Choose the Mark as Done option from the menu.

To sign up for reminder email notifications:

View the Reminders section at the top of your note list.

Click the gear icon.

Choose Subscription Settings from the menu.

Check any of the notebooks for which you want to receive reminders.

Stacey’s GTD task management system

As described in her introduction, Stacey subscribes to the GTD methodology and, as a result, created a digital “Tickler” system in Evernote inspired by the folder system that David Allen suggests in his book. Stacey uses it to manage her daily task list and, when she has a window of time without a calendared item, she refers to her daily tickler note for items to tackle that day.

She tracks any time specific tasks or meetings on her calendar, not in Evernote. Her Tickler system is only for actions that must be done on a certain day, but it doesn’t matter at what time that item gets done (such as “pay property taxes” or “book flight for San Francisco”).

Overview of the system

Stacey’s GTD tickler system is structured around a notebook for each month and 31 daily notes that rotate from the current month to the next month as each date passes. Each daily note contains the actions that are due that day. Any to-dos that don’t have a specific due date are added to the “Next Actions” stack and are tackled as time allows.

Stacey’s tickler stack/notebook system

Setting up the system

The naming conventions are important for keeping the notebooks in order and clearly identifying which notes to move between notebooks in the system.

Create your stack of monthly notebooks:

Create twelve notebooks, one for each month.

Create a stack called “Ticklers” by dragging one of the monthly notebooks onto another. Continue that process until all of the notebooks are in one stack. Right- or Control-click on the stack to rename it.

For the current month, and following month, change the name of the notebook to be proceeded by “.Current Month” and “.Next Month.” The period at the beginning of the notebook name sorts it to the top of the stack.

In each monthly notebook, create a single note that is titled “Tickler: <Month> Planning.” Pin the note to the top of the notebook by clicking on the Reminder icon. You do not need to add a date to the reminder.

Create your daily notes:

In the “.Current Month (<month>)” notebook, create 31 blank notes, one for each day of the month and name each note with the date of the month as follows:

.1st
.2nd
.3rd
.4th
.5th
.6th
.7th
.8th
.9th
10th
etc.

Create all 31 notes (1st - 31st) even if there are only 30 days in the current month. Start the note title for notes 1st - 9th with a period (.), so that the notes sort in order to the top of the notebook.   

Split the notes for each day of the month between the “Current Month” and “Next Month” notebooks, depending what day of the month it is currently. For example, if it is currently December 4th, move the notes .1st, .2nd and .3rd that you created to the “.Next Month (January)” notebook.  You can move notes by dragging and dropping them, using the Note>Move to Notebook command from the menu or, on the Mac, the keyboard shortcut Control+Command+M .

If the current month only has 30 days, move the note for the 31st to the next month notebook as well. In this example, December has 31 days, so you would leave the note for the 31st in the “.Current Month (December)” notebook. 

Your setup is complete. You now have a note to manage your active task list for each day.  

Managing the system day-to-day

Using the checklist feature to make a list in your daily note, document to-dos that must get done on a specific day and check them off as you complete them. You can add links to other notes that you need to use to complete those tasks.  

To copy a note link:

Highlight the note that you want to link to.

Choose Copy> Note Link from the menu, or right or Control click on the note and choose Copy Note Link from the pop-up menu.

Move to the note where you want to add the link and choose Edit>Paste, or right or Control Click and choose Paste from the pop-up menu.

Stacey breaks her daily tickler note into two sections, Personal and Business, with corresponding checklists under each.

A sample daily note

During the day, as tasks arise for future days, Stacey opens those notes and adds the item to the list. If a task comes up for a future month, she adds that item to “Tickler: <Month> Planning” note in the appropriate month notebook. At the beginning of that month, she moves the to-do to the appropriate note for the day on which it is due.

For example, if December is the current month, but she comes across something that she needs to take care of in April, like make an appointment with her accountant to review her taxes, she opens the “April” notebook and logs the to-do in the “Tickler: April Planning” note.

At the end of each day, Stacey reviews her tickler note for that day and does the following:

Deletes any completed tasks.

Moves any incomplete tasks to a new note - either to the tickler note for a future day or month, or to the “Next Actions” stack if it is no longer imperative that it gets done on a specific day.  

Once the note is cleared, Stacey moves the tickler note for that day into the “.Next Month (<month>)” notebook.

Monthly system maintenance

At the end of the month, Stacey performs some basic maintenance to get her system ready for the next month. She has already moved the daily notes from the current month to the next month’s notebook as part of her daily process. The only note remaining note in the “.Current Month” notebook is the “<Month> Planning” note. Reset the reminder on this note for the month you just completed in order to pin it to the top of the notebook for quick access in the All Notes view.

The final steps in the process are to rename the monthly notebooks and break out the to-dos for the month into the daily notes.

Rename the notebook of the new current month and next month. For example, January would be named, “.Current Month (January)” and the following month renamed to “.Next Month (February).”

If the current month does not have 31 days, move the extra daily notes to the next appropriate month when they will be used. For example, if the current month is February, you would move the notes for the 29th, 30th and 31st to March.

Move (cut and paste) any to-dos in the “<Month> Planning” note to their specific daily note for that month. For example, if you have two tasks on the “January Planning” note, move them the relevant daily notes in the “January” notebook.

Sample monthly note

Once the monthly planning note for the new month (in this example January) is blank, clear the reminder is on the “<Month> Planning” note so that it does not appear at the top of the daily note list when sorted alphabetically.

A non-Evernote approach to task management

As much as Kristi loves Evernote, she has chosen not to use it for her task management system and instead uses software specially designed for organizing a to-do list. One of her clients is a company called Effective Edge and she follows their methodology for managing work. The EDGE system shares many of the same core concepts of GTD, but differs in a few key areas.

One of those is that instead of using a Tickler system, work is organized around a calendar and task list that can be viewed and managed side-by-side. All outstanding work goes on the calendar if it is time specific or the task list if it has a due by date or no due date.

A number of software programs support this type of dashboard view including email tools like Outlook, Lotus Notes and Google Calendar; Kristi uses Google. There are also a number of apps that manage tasks like Things and Any.Do. Kristi turns to Evernote to organize projects (see the next section for more on that), but uses Google for daily task and calendar management.

Kristi’s calendar and task dashboard

Summary

Whether you are solving how you manage receipts, organizing projects or tracking leads, Evernote can help you centralize your business operations and minimize some of the mundane administrative work. Knowing that everything is in Evernote, synchronized to all of your devices and available at your fingertips gives you confidence that you can find what you need when you need it, and relief that you don’t have to worry about it.

What administrative hurdle are you facing? Sketch out a plan of how you can use Evernote to make that process easier or more reliable. After you have that challenge solved, you’ll be ready to fine-tune another workflow and streamline it using Evernote.

Untethered Toolkit

Get Going

Do you need a home base for executing your plans for the year? Create a business plan note to organize the targeted areas of focus for each month.

Drowning in receipts? Create a workflow of your expenses and scan your receipts to Evernote. Remember key considerations like who needs access to the information if you are sharing with a bookkeeper or accountant.

How are you handling that stack of business cards? Consider adding them to Evernote and creating a system for proactive lead management.

Do you need a place to organize your tasks? Create checklists, add reminders or create a GTD style system like Stacey’s to keep your work organized.

Dig Deep

In this chapter, we introduced the following tools. You can read more about the details of how to use them by clicking the links below:

Setting a reminder (Mac, Windows)

Using Post-it Notes with Evernote

Sharing a notebook and using note links (Mac, Windows)

Using the Evernote Web Clipper

Chapter 5: Effortless Teamwork

Workflows for managing a productive team

You may have employees, work with contractors or coordinate with vendors, but in some way you are turning to others to help get work done faster and better - you have a team. As an independent entrepreneur, that team probably isn’t centralized in one office and could be scattered across the country, or even around the world. You need a way to coordinate and collaborate to make the most of the time you work together.

For example:

How do you keep up with items that you need to talk to your team members about in between meetings? Are you constantly scribbling down meeting agenda items on scraps of paper, only finding them after the meeting happens?

Where do you organize projects so that everyone involved can see their assignments and follow through in a timely manner? How do you know when someone has completed something?

Evernote can serve as your command center for team communication and coordination. Shared notebooks provide an easy way for you to keep each other updated without bombarding each other in email.

To use Evernote’s sharing capabilities most effectively as a team, everyone should have an Evernote account and, ideally, at the Premium or Business level so that you can edit notes in shared notebooks. The $45 per year fee for the Premium account is a small price to pay for the gains in productivity.

In this chapter, we give you an overview of some key tools for collaboration and present examples of how you can use Evernote to effortlessly work with your team. In particular, we introduce how to:

Effectively manage collaboration using the activity feed, note history, note information and conflicting changes features.

Plan agendas for action-oriented meetings.

Organize team projects.

Key Collaboration Tools

Evernote includes several features that are particularly helpful when you are collaborating with others. Activity Feed, Note History and Note Info help you keep track of who made what changes to notes and when they made them. “Conflicting Changes” notebooks help you track notes that have gotten out of sync because more than one person was working on them at a time.

Before you start setting up the team workflows, let’s review how these features work.

Activity feed

Evernote’s activity feed (visible on the desktop version of Evernote) displays a list of notifications of changes that have been made in shared notebooks. Clicking on the notification displays the note.

Activity feed

Note history

Premium and business users can access note history to review when others have made changes to a note. You can use note history to retrieve a prior version of a note. The restored note is imported into a separate notebook created by Evernote.

To review note history:

Select the note in the notes list and choose Note> Note History from the menu.

In the Note History window, click on a version of the note to see the contents.

To restore a version of the note, click the Import option to the right of the note date and time stamp.

Note history

Note info

Each note in Evernote contains basic pieces of information that you can review at any time like the date it was last updated, who last edited the note or the location where it was created. Premium users can also access the full note history from this window.

To view the Note Info window, click the Information icon at the top of the note on the desktop client or web interface.

Note info

Note conflicts

If you use Evernote frequently from multiple devices, like your phone and computer, or share notebooks with others, it is possible for the notes to get out of sync. When a conflict occurs, Evernote places the conflicting note in a notebook titled “Conflicting Changes.”

For example, if you update a note on your computer, forget to sync, then change the note on your phone, the next time you sync on your computer, the note will be in conflict.

You should manually review the note in the conflicting changes notebook and your original note to determine which copy is correct. You can manually move or add any data to the main note and then delete the conflicting note, as well as the conflicting changes notebook if no longer needed.

Note conflicts can be frustrating and following are a few best practices to avoid them.

Change your default auto-sync time frame to every 5 minutes in the program preferences. And, while you are here, confirm that your “Sync shortcuts” box is checked to make your shortcuts available on all devices.

Default synchronization settings

Force a note to synchronize using the sync button after you make changes to a note (similar to saving a document as you work in it.) The sync button is available on every client of Evernote.

When in doubt, sync. If you have been making changes in Evernote, always hit the sync button before you walk away from your computer or put down your mobile device. Same with shutting down Evernote – always sync before doing so.

When sharing notes, be clear about who is modifying certain notes by asking “are you modifying that note?” before you make changes. This is particularly helpful when working with meeting agendas and other notes that you might be reviewing as part of a meeting.

Attaching and working with documents

Evernote allows you to attach files to any note, a particularly helpful feature when you are centralizing information for a client or project. As with any storage tool used in collaboration, consider how you can ensure that the document stored in Evernote is the most current version.

When you attach a file in Evernote, you have the option to preview it or download the file.

Attaching a file

When you preview the file, Evernote gives you the option to open the document with the program in which it was created. From the originating program, you can make changes, save the file and the update is saved in Evernote. Don’t forget to sync after completing work in the file to ensure that the updates are available on all devices and to anyone with access to the note.

Opening a document from an attached file

You can also make changes to the attached file by downloading a copy of it, but the changes are not be automatically reflected in Evernote. In order to store the changes in Evernote, re-attach the file to Evernote. This technique can be confusing in collaborative workflows.

Alternatively, rather than embedding a file in a note with Evernote’s attach feature, you can insert hyperlinks in your notes to the stored files on services like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive. When you want to edit the document, you click on the link to open it. The drawback to this method is that it does not load the content of the file in Evernote and therefore is not indexed by Evernote for searches, a benefit of Premium and Business accounts.

Adding a hyperlink to a note

Creating Team Synergy

Once you have defined how you want to use the collaboration tools, it’s time to consider what workflows you need for your team. Key questions to consider in designing your solutions include:

Do you need a place to organize team meetings?

Where do team members look to find their assignments from a meeting?

How are your projects organized? Can everyone on the team see what he or she needs to do next? How do you know when they have finished a task?

Using Evernote shared notes and notebooks can help you coordinate the work you need to do without dropping the ball or having to micromanage your team.

Productive Team Meetings

Having productive team discussions, whether those team members are full-time, part-time or contract, is key to doing great work. Using Evernote, you can create agendas for the items to cover in your next meeting and have a running list that you can add to at any time. The next time ideas for a client meeting pop into your head during a run or while you are out shopping, just add it to your Evernote agenda.

Stacey created a notebook called “Agendas” and creates a note for each person in her work (and personal) life that she has items to follow-up on or address. She names each note “Agenda: <person’s name>” and uses the checklist feature to log the items to discuss.

Stacey’s agenda note

As she meets with them, she works through the list, taking notes and checking off the items as they are covered. She also links to any supporting notes so that the agenda acts as a table of contents to related and supporting items. This makes the call or meeting with the person organized and as efficient as possible.

After the meeting, she organizes the line items that were discussed into their proper location in her GTD system and starts listing items for their next discussion at the top of the same note.

Kristi uses a similar approach, but prefers to have each meeting separated into its own note. For example, she and her assistant have a weekly meeting at which they discuss the plan for the next week and assign work as needed. They keep the agenda in a shared notebook with the date of the next meeting in the title of the note and a note reminder set for the day of the meeting so that they can easily access the note in the reminder list.

Kristi’s team meeting agenda note

During the week, they each add items to the agenda portion of the note. As they assign work in the meeting, they add a checklist for the appropriate person at the bottom of the note. As one of them finishes their work during the week, they check the item off in the note to indicate that the work is done.

Managing Team Projects

Evernote is an ideal tool for managing projects, helping you organize research and working notes in one place and share them with your team. Whether you are hiring a new team member or updating your website, managing it from Evernote makes your life simpler.

Hiring a contractor

Stacey creates a notebook for each new project. For example, when hiring a new contractor, she created a notebook called Hiring and used it to draft the job ad, track resumes and document interview notes. Here’s a quick overview of what that workflow looks like.

When posting the job notice online, Stacey clipped the posting to Evernote using the Evernote Web Clipper in order to retain a copy of her job ad as it appeared on each site.

Saving the ad with the Evernote Web Clipper

As she received résumés, she emailed them to Evernote and stored them in the “Hiring” notebook.

Her assistant reviewed each resume using a template and wrote a summary of the candidate with his opinion on whether they should be interviewed or not.

Stacey added a prefix to the note title to indicate whether or not to schedule an interview and to provide a visual grouping of the candidates when the notes were sorted by title.

INTERVIEW (Set an interview.)

MAYBE (Candidates to consider and give a closer look to. Maybe offer them an interview if people who went straight to Interview status didn’t work out.) 

NO (Rejected candidates.)

Stacey created a template note listing questions to ask during the phone interview. This note was pinned to the top of the notebook with a non-dated reminder and the contents of the note were copied and pasted into the note of the interview candidates.

Stacey’s interview template

During the interview process, she took notes directly in the candidate’s note that already contained their resume and the interview questions.

At the end of the interview, Stacey logged her notes about her impressions of the candidate and the interview. If she wasn’t interested in the candidate after the interview, she retitled the title with a NO and made a note as to why the person wasn’t a good fit.  

Stacey also keeps supporting documents such as links to personality tests and other evaluation tools in the hiring notebook.  

Giving the blog a face lift

For projects, Kristi creates a master note for the project plan and adds a reminder, with a due date if there is one, to pin the note to the top of notebook for that area of work. Recently, she and her assistant used Evernote to plan an upgrade to the theme and some of the plug-ins for their WordPress blog, Kristi’s Farm to Table.

First, Kristi created the project plan note, stored it in the “Kristi’s Farm to Table” notebook and assigned a reminder with the due date by which they wanted to finish the upgrade. She assigned a tag, “KF2T3.0”, to the note.

As they worked on the project, they used Evernote in a variety of ways to do the planning:

Conducted a brainstorming session with Post-it Notes that she then photographed into Evernote.

Clipped examples of theme templates and calendar plug-ins they were interested in.

Created a project plan for each item that needed to be updated or changed with a timeframe and an owner.

Each note was added to the “Kristi’s Farm to Table” notebook and used the “KF2T3.0” tag to designate the notes as part of the project.

When they selected a particular element for the new design, they added a link to that note in the project plan so that they could easily navigate back to the note containing their final selection.

As one of them completed work on a phase of the project, they updated the project note so the other could see the progress.

Sample internal project plan note

Summary

Evernote is an ideal tool for coordinating with your team. Whether you are planning your next meeting or collaborating on a project, shared notes and notebooks can keep everyone on the same page.

What work do you need to coordinate with your team? How should team members add items to meeting agendas? Do they know where to find their next task on a project or the current status of the work? Evernote can help you solve these challenges, and more.

Untethered Toolkit

Get Going

Do you have a place to organize your meeting agendas? Create a note for your next team meeting in a shared notebook or email the agenda to the team before the meeting and share it again afterwards with the decisions and commitments.

Where are your projects organized? Create a team project in Evernote giving everyone easy access to the next steps and progress updates.

Download copies of Stacey’s and Kristi’s project and meeting note templates from the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources.

Dig Deep

In this chapter, we introduced the following tools. You can read more about the details of how to use them by clicking the links below:

Note history

Handling conflicting notes

Working with file attachments

Chapter 6: Happy Customers

Workflows for meaningful engagement with clients

At its core, business is all about keeping the customers happy with excellent service and outstanding products. When your business operations are running smoothly, you have more time to focus on meaningful work with your clients and customers and, to do that effectively, you need a place where you can organize that client work and share ideas.

You may face, like we did, the following dilemmas:

Where do you currently organize client projects? Is the information scattered between several applications or documents?

How do you update your clients on project progress?

Do you need a place to collaborate and share information that doesn’t involve bombarding each other with email?

How can new people on the client team see what was accomplished previously?

Evernote can help centralize your client work making it easier to share and collaborate. Whether you are organizing client projects, creating a shared workspace or curating content for their consumption, Evernote can serve as your home base for managing your client projects and developing outstanding products.

In this chapter, we guide you through four different examples of how to use Evernote to serve your clients:

Organizing client work internally.

Sharing work with non-Evernote users.

Using shared notebooks to create a collaborative workspace with clients.

Curating content for clients using a notebook shared with a public link.

A few factors help you determine how to setup your client projects:

Who needs access to the information in Evernote? Are you using the notebook to organize client work for yourself or do you need to share information with your client?

What level of access do other people need to the information? Do they only need to review it or do they need to be able to make changes?

Does your client use Evernote?

We recommend creating a notebook for each client where you can store meeting notes, draft work, research and other items related to your work together. This main notebook serves as your primary reference place for that client. You can share individual notes from this main notebook or, if you have quite a few items to share, you can create a separate notebook for items both you and your client can see.

Remember that you can share any note or notebook, but in order for the other person to be able to edit the notes, you must both have Evernote Premium or Business accounts.

Organizing Client Work Internally

Kristi writes for several different media outlets and creates a notebook for each client, adding it to her “KWSG-Clients” stack. She doesn’t share these notebooks with her clients (the magazines), but rather uses them to organize research and interviews for articles.

Kristi’s client notebooks

Kristi regularly clips ideas to these notebooks for stories she’d like to write in the future. She adds a “story ideas” tag to each piece of research and then reviews those tagged notes monthly, picking a few to develop into pitches to the editors.

When the editor assigns the story, Kristi replaces the “story ideas” tag with a new tag for that issue of the magazine. For example, for an upcoming Edible Austin issue, she created the tag “EA outdoor 2014.” She also adds a reminder with a due date to pin the note at the top of her notes list.

Project planning note

That note now serves as the project plan for organizing the story. Kristi might add notes from the editor on the word count and story points, as well as people to interview.

As she researches the story, she clips additional information to the magazine’s notebook, using the issue tag to group the notes together. Kristi records her interviews in Evernote using the audio note feature and, again, assigns the appropriate tag. For longer interviews, her assistant transcribes the interviews into a separate note.

Audio note

When it’s time to draft the story, Kristi searches for the assigned tag and all of the research appears together. She then writes a rough draft in Evernote, before transferring it to a word processor to finish the piece.

Kristi uses the issue tag to pull the research together

Sharing with Non-Evernote Users

Kristi’s corporate clients are not always Evernote users, but she often wants to share information, like the project status, with them during the life of the project. Again, she creates a notebook for the client, using it as the organizing place for all of the client project work.

When Kristi starts a new project with that client, she creates a master note for the project plan, adding a reminder with a due date, if there is one, and a tag that she uses for any notes for that project. In the project plan, she creates a timeline using the table feature and a list of key assets used with the project.

Client project plan

Periodically during the life of the project, she emails that note out to the clients as an update of where they are in the timeline and what steps are next.

Emailing a note

Kristi also stores meeting agendas and notes for that client in their notebook. She sets a reminder with the date of the meeting to pin the note to the top of the notes list and emails the note to the client before the meeting to share the agenda. She documents actions and discussion items in the note during the meeting and sends a second copy to the client after the meeting to ensure that everyone has the same information.

Client meeting note

If she is working with a client frequently, Kristi uses LiveMinutes, a third-party application that creates a workspace where you can add notes from Evernote or other documents and both parties can see the edits live. LiveMinutes allows you to share information in a conference or video call without having to share your screen, and the workspace is available for commenting and additional work after the call is over.

LiveMinutes workspace

LiveMinutes is a great solution for sharing notes and documents when you want an ongoing workspace beyond the online meeting or need to share editable notes with multiple people who many not be Evernote Premium users. You can store multiple Evernote notes and documents in each workspace and call, video or chat with the other workspace members. As members make changes or add documents, the list shows the changes along with any new messages.

For more information on working with LiveMinutes, visit the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources.

Another great example of sharing notes with non-Evernote users comes from Stacey’s work with real estate agents on how to they can use Evernote to elevate their business. Agents are constantly working from their mobile devices and need to provide visual, highly detailed information to their clients in a timely manner. Evernote is an outstanding solution to address all of these needs.

Consider the example of a property walkthrough with a buyer. An agent equipped with Evernote on tablet or phone can better prepare and represent their client in contract negotiations in the following ways:

Create a new note for the walkthrough that includes the address, for example: “Home Walkthrough – 123 Madison.”

Ask the client’s permission to record their thoughts and concerns about the house using the audio feature, giving you a full detailed account of your conversation that you can review or transcribe later.

Add notes or create a to-do checklist of follow-up items.

Use the camera feature to snap photos of items that there are questions about – a water stain on the ceiling or a hole in the wall. You can also document items that require clarification about their inclusion in the deal. Photos can be annotated from your mobile device using Skitch, drawing arrows and adding text to minimize communication errors with your clients and other parties in the transaction.

Share the note with your client via email, or a public note, so that they can verify that all of their key points of interest are documented in the final offer.

Sample walkthrough note marked up on the iPhone

You don’t have to be a real estate agent to see the power in using the mobile device to capture text, audio and pictures in the same note. Do you need to inspect a product or do a walkthrough of a venue for an upcoming event? Or, do you need to capture whiteboard or flipchart notes from a meeting? Not only does Evernote make it easy to capture that information, but you can also quickly annotate it and share it with your clients.

Creating a Collaborative Workspace

As part of Stacey’s work, she designs social marketing strategies that require creating content, art and tracking many details through collaboration with numerous parties. This type of work calls for more than one notebook to keep everything organized and shared with the right people.

When she works on a marketing project, she sets up several notebooks based on the complexity of the required collaboration. In the case of her client Island Sole, she used five Evernote notebooks to manage the project. She also created similar shared folders on Dropbox for storing of media assets.

Client - Island Sole: This primary notebook contains Stacey’s personal notes and thoughts related to the project. She also stores important emails from the client and inspiration documents that might impact the strategy. It is not shared with anyone, but instead is her personal workspace for the client.  

HE Client - Island Sole: This notebook is part of the Harmon Enterprises Business Library and Stacey’s assistant also has access to it. All internal team collaboration for the client takes place here. For example, during the weekly marketing meeting call with the client and the copywriter, Stacey’s assistant takes meeting notes in this notebook and then shares the note with the client via email.

They also use this notebook as a place to store screen captures of items related to configuring the client’s social media accounts, documenting the work they’ve done for the client and for keeping to-do lists for team members.

Client - Island Sole: Content: As they receive assets, like copy, ideas and images, that are part of the content plan, they store them in the client’s “Content” notebook. They can collaborate on those items and limit the number of emails. Stacey, her assistant and the copywriter have access to this notebook.

Client - Island Sole: Design: All directions, brand guidelines, specifications and items related to the design needs of the client are added to this notebook for use by Stacey, her assistant and her designer. For example, a URL list of all the brand’s current social sites is added so that the designer can get a feel for what is already out there in terms of brand design.

As the designer finishes the composites, she stores them in the design notebook and shares the note with Stacey by email, to alert her the work is finished.

Island Sole FI Collaboration: This final notebook is shared with everyone on the project, including the client, and provides a central repository for items related to managing the account. For example, this client captures email addresses weekly at the cash register, adds them to Evernote and the team enters them to MailChimp.

Curating Content

Stacey and Kristi both give speeches and do training as part of their work. They use public notes and notebooks as a way to share the “how to” information with the attendees in a location that is regularly updated. Any updates made to the source note(s) are reflected in the public link URL. Anyone with the URL can access a public note or notebook.

Kristi also uses public notebooks when facilitating large group sessions. She recently facilitated the kick-off planning session for a new nonprofit. She needed a way to store and share pre-workshop materials, the presentation and brainstorming notes with people attending the workshop in person and virtually. She also did not know what software people would have available and needed a solution that would work for everyone – clearly Evernote was the answer.

Kristi created an Evernote notebook for the organization and added a note for each section of the workshop, as well as the pre-work. She created a Table of Contents note to organize the agenda and make the materials easy to access for participants.

Table of Contents note

To create a Table of Contents note:

Highlight the notes that you want to appear together in the Table of Contents. You can highlight several notes in a contiguous list by clicking on the first note, holding down the SHIFT key on the keyboard and clicking on the last note. If the notes are scattered in the list, click on the first note, then hold down the Control key on the keyboard as you click on the remaining notes.

Click the Create Table of Contents Note button in the Preview area.

Before the meeting, Kristi shared the notebook with a public link and sent the URL to the organizer to distribute to all attendees.

To share a notebook with a public link:

Click on the Notebooks section.

Hover over the name of the notebook you want to share.

Click the Share icon.

Click the Create a Public Link button.

During the meeting she used the Table of Contents note and Presentation mode to share notes with participants. Presentation Mode allows you to present notes in a full screen mode much like PowerPoint or Keystone, but without having to create a separate document. When you project a presentation, you can edit the note you are presenting to show real-time changes to your audience.

Presentation mode

For brainstorming sessions, participants used Post-it Notes to capture ideas and Kristi added pictures of the notes to the notebook using Evernote’s Post-it Note camera mode. The photos of the Post-it Notes capture the information from the session in a readable format that is also searchable, allowing people who participated virtually or who couldn’t attend the meeting to have a good record of the ideas generated. Being able to take photos of the notes saved Kristi about two hours of work each day because she did not have to type up the material on each brainstorming board.

Post-it Note stored in Evernote

After the meeting, Kristi shared the notebook with several of the organization’s officers so they could modify notes, and the group still uses it today as a place to share ideas around their organizing principles.

Summary

Whether you are organizing client work for yourself or looking for ways to collaborate more effectively together, Evernote gives you a variety of tools that can help you deliver work that keeps your clients happy and coming back for more.

Reflect on the client work you need to organize. Do you need to share notebooks to collaborate or just organize your thoughts internally? How can you harness the power of Evernote to better serve your clients, while keeping you untethered?

Start by creating a main notebook for that client and then expand with other tools as your work together grows. Being able to find what you need for them quickly will impress them and make your life easier.

Untethered Toolkit

Get Going

Create notes and notebooks as needed to organize your current client projects.

Create notes for your upcoming client meeting agendas.

Share notebooks with your clients, publicly or privately, as appropriate.

Dig Deep

In this chapter, we introduced the following tools. You can read more about the details of how to use them by clicking the links below:

Recording audio notes (Mac, Windows)

Searching with tags (Mac, Windows)

Emailing a note

Working with Skitch to annotate a note (Mac, Windows)

Creating a Table of Contents note and using Presentation Mode (Mac)

Sharing a public notebook link

Chapter 7: Prioritizing the Personal

Solutions for creating a full and meaningful home life

It is easy for entrepreneurs to give their personal life short shrift and let their business take over. We both place a high value on making our personal lives as rich and meaningful as the work we enjoy, and we use Evernote to keep us on track with our personal goals as well as manage our daily chores with grace.

What personal items would you like to centralize and organize?

Is your business growing, but your personal growth has stalled?

Can you easily access your health care information when you need it?

How do you plan your vacations and getaways? Do you have a bucket list of places you want to visit?

Are your recipes shoved in binders or boxes, difficult to find when you want to make that special dish?

Are you tired of playing the “I don’t know, where do you want to eat?” game?

Do you have your grocery list scratched on the back of an envelope?

Where do you keep up with gift ideas for that someone special?

Do you need a centralized place to track homework and activities for your kids?

Evernote can help you organize and prioritize these personal areas of your life so that you can enjoy your time away from work more and worry less.

In this chapter, we guide you through several examples of how we use Evernote to simplify our personal lives by:

Tracking progress toward personal goals.

Documenting health care history.

Planning a vacation.

Collecting recipes and making a grocery list.

Creating a list of restaurants you want to try and capturing your meals with Evernote Food.

Organizing a move.

The possibilities are endless for putting Evernote to work at home. Let’s explore!

Tracking Personal Goals

Business goals are important, but we want to make sure that we are growing personally as well. At the beginning of each year, Kristi sets a few personal goals, she’d like to achieve – not resolutions, but actual, tangible goals – and she works on those weekly or monthly depending on the goal.

Kristi creates a master note for her goal and uses it to create a plan for what she wants to accomplish. She sets a reminder to pin it to the top of her notes list and refers to the note weekly to determine if she needs to add anything to her to-do list or add new details to her plan.

Personal goal note

At the end of the year, she reviews her notes to see her progress. Sometimes she has accomplished everything she wanted, and other times she still has work to do, in which case she might carry the note over to the next year. The important thing is that she’s made progress toward her goals and Evernote has helped her get there.

Keeping Tabs on Your Health

Staying healthy and fit is always a priority and keeping up with medical paperwork can be a real hassle. Stacey uses Evernote to manage the details of her health history and to have it at her fingertips.

On a recent out-of-state trip, Stacey fell ill and had to visit an urgent care center. She didn’t have her insurance cards with her, but was able to show the admission desk a picture of her cards in Evernote, simplifying the billing process and getting Stacey the care she needed faster. If you have a family to add to the mix, having everyone’s information in one place becomes even more important.

Stacey created a Health notebook and she stores all of her insurance details and health history in it. Since this information is very sensitive, she uses Evernote’s encryption feature, requiring a password to view the data.

To encrypt a note:

Select the text you want to encrypt.

Choose Edit> Encrypt Selected Text (Mac) or Format> Encrypt Selected Text (Windows) from the menu.

Enter the encryption paraphrase you want to use and confirm in the second text box.

Click OK.

Following are a few of the things Stacey stores in her “Health” notebook:

Insurance cards: She photographs both sides of the card, types out the number of her policy (so that she can copy/paste it into web forms when requested) and adds a few key details about the policy, including the URL link to her plan. She also includes a snapshot of the Benefits at a Glance for the policy so that she doesn’t have to search online for it when she needs it.

“Insurance history” note: Showing continuous coverage can be an important detail when you switch insurance carriers or apply for new coverage. This note helps remind her of the dates and companies associated with her health insurance coverage.

“Medical history” note: This note keeps track of relevant medical history that doctors request at intake. It includes sections for medication history, which she encrypts. She has created a table in which she tracks the medicines she has taken so she can answer any doctor’s questions about previous medications.

Scans of all Estimation of Benefits

Scans or photographs of the policy details

Copies of blood work and other test results.

Keep in mind that you cannot encrypt images, only text, so if you are concerned about privacy, you may want to limit how much data you scan into Evernote regarding your health history. Stacey finds that the benefit of having the information centralized and accessible when she needs it outweighs the risk of having the data digitized in Evernote.

Planning Your Next Great Escape

Everyone needs time to kick back and relax and Evernote is ideal for organizing vacations, particularly when you are traveling with a group and trying to track everyone’s travel arrangements and priorities.

Kristi has several notebooks that she uses to plan vacations, some of which are shared with friends. First, she captures information about places she wants to visit in her “Trip Ideas” notebook. She keeps a note titled “Travel Bucket List” that is organized by region and adds new cities or countries to the list as she discovers them. When she’s ready to plan a vacation, she peruses the list and notes she has saved to narrow her choices.

Kristi’s travel bucket list

She also uses shared notebooks to plan trips with friends. She travels to New Orleans annually with a group and each of them add notes to their shared “NOLA” notebook all year long. Before the trip, they review all of the notes and come up with a plan for their visit.

The shared NOLA notebook

Their list of recommendations has gained some notoriety and they often share it with others who are headed to the Big Easy with the request that the recipients share any new great finds with the group.

For a weeklong trip to Puerto Rico, Kristi and her traveling companion also created a shared notebook. They both clipped articles of interest, stored their flight details and information about the condo they rented. Both of them had all of the information they needed about the trip and they didn’t have to dig through their email to find it.

The Inspired Foodie

Even before she started writing about food, Kristi’s been a “foodie,” devouring food magazines, attending cooking classes and experimenting in the kitchen. She originally started using Evernote to organize her unwieldy recipe collection stored in five, three-ring binders. Trying to find anything was a nightmare and she didn’t have access to the recipes unless she was at her house. Now, she uses Evernote and Evernote Food (iOS and Android only), a companion app focused on recipes and dining out, to manage her culinary world.

Can you quickly find that recipe you saved last month? How do you keep up with your shopping list? Are you stuck in a rut of eating at the same places and want to branch out to new restaurants? Do you want to remember your favorite dishes at that new spot? If you are a foodie, Evernote can help you plan your next great meal whether you are doing the cooking or dining out.

Collecting recipes

Kristi reads a large pile of food magazines and a long list of blogs regularly. She aggregates the blogs she follows in Feedly, an RSS reader that integrates with Evernote, reviewing articles daily for things she wants to save. As she finds recipes she wants to try, she either clips or scans the recipes into a notebook called “Recipes from Others.”

Feedly RSS Reader

To learn more about how to use Feedly with Evernote, visit the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources.

Kristi also adds to the notebook using the Explore Recipes feature on Evernote Food. With the app, she can search a collection of recipe websites and blogs and save recipes she likes to her notebook.

Recipe search on Evernote Food

Grocery shopping

Despite loving food, Kristi does not love grocery shopping and likes to make the trips to the store fast and efficient. She created a note with her standard grocery list in order by the aisles at her local store. When she plans a trip to the store, she copies the note to a new note and adds and deletes items, as needed.  

Kristi’s grocery template and shortcut

When she’s shopping, Kristi keeps Evernote open on her phone and checks items off as she moves from aisle to aisle.

Dining 0ut

Evernote Food also helps Kristi keep up with restaurants she wants to try. She uses the Saved tab in the Restaurants section to keep a running list of places she wants to eat. When she hears that a new place has opened, she looks it up on the Explore tab, and then clips it to the Saved list.

Saved restaurant list in Evernote Food

The next time she and her friends are trying to pick a spot to eat, she flips through the Saved list to find a new place to try.

Capturing meals

Kristi also uses Evernote Food to keep up with the dishes she eats at different restaurants and festivals. Sometimes there is quite a gap between when she eats somewhere and when she writes about it and the Meal feature in Evernote Food helps her keep the photos and notes from her meals organized.

Meals in Evernote Food

If you don’t have the ability to use, or interest in using Evernote Food, you can create restaurant lists and capture meals directly in Evernote. The steps may not be as automated, but the results are the same – you have your places to try and favorite meals at your fingertips.

For example, Stacey, who is less of a foodie than Kristi, takes a different approach. She keeps a “Restaurants to Try in Austin” checklist note that she has added to her shortcuts list. She often references this note on her phone while planning meals with friends. Stacey likes to use Evernote food to remember special meals – such as multi-course meals at renowned restaurants.

Making a Smooth Move

Moving is never fun – there are so many small details and things that have to be taken care of even before you pack the first box. When Stacey decided to move from Southern California to Austin she turned to Evernote to organize everything from selling things she wasn’t taking to getting bids from movers.

First, she created an “Austin Move” notebook where she kept all the notes related to her move, such as moving estimates, design inspiration ideas for her new place, forms that she’d have to fill out at the DMV, packing checklists, etc.

To make sure she wasn’t moving things she didn’t need, she sold a number of items on Craig’s List. In her “Austin Move” notebook, she created a note called “Craig’s List Links” where she centralized the URLs for all of the postings she made. 

Stacey’s Craig’s List links

In each of the Craig’s List ads, she mentioned that she had other items for sale to speed up the process of selling all her older stuff. When she received inquiries about the additional items, she was able to just copy and paste the URLs from the furniture section of the “Craig’s List Links” note and send it off to the person interested in buying.

For the smaller stuff that is harder to sell on Craig’s List, Stacey had an “indoor garage sale.” She used Skitch to annotate a picture with the prices of the items she was selling, and used those images in the ad. She was then able to share the link on Facebook.

The indoor garage sale photo marked up with Skitch

To coordinate with the movers, Stacey created a public note with photos of her condo and the bulky items that she was moving. She shared it with moving companies to get competitive bids. This allowed her to get an accurate quote without having the sales people come to the house to physically see the property and her things, saving time and effort for everyone. Once she chose a mover, Stacey kept the agreed upon estimate in Evernote.

Stacey’s note to collect bids from moving companies

Stacey saved money on moving supplies by tracking the prices in a table in her Evernote account. She bolded the cheapest price for the items she needed to buy and then purchased them from the cheapest place, or compared prices from her phone when she was at the store.

A lot of the forms, bids, receipts and other documents Stacey needed to keep track of throughout the moving process came through her email inbox. In order to easily find it all later without digging around in her inbox, Stacey bcc’d her Evernote email account on every email related to her move. Each email created a new note in her Evernote account.

Forwarding an email to Evernote

More Ideas for Prioritizing Your Personal Life

Create a “Read/Review” notebook for any articles or stories of interest to read when you have free time.

Feathering the nest? Store photos, clips and articles of your interior design favorites in Evernote and review them when you are ready to make a purchase.

Coordinate the family with a shared notebook for documents related to family affairs.

Save your favorite workouts with photos of how to perform each exercise to a “Fitness” notebook and you’ll be able to get in a good burn no matter where you are.

Make a packing list checklist to make sure you can pack that bag quickly without leaving anything behind.

Capture gift ideas in Evernote. Add the URL or a photo of the item to make it easy to shop when birthdays and holidays roll around.

Clip your favorite restaurant to-go menus in Evernote.

Catalog your favorite beers or wines, taking a photo of the label and making notes about its qualities.

Organize your coupons in Evernote. It’s the perfect place to track discount codes and expiration dates.

Keep your happy memories in Evernote, scanning handwritten notes or taking pictures of greeting cards you receive. Glance back through the notes whenever you need a smile!

A few of our favorite ways to use Evernote

Check out more ideas on how to organize your life with Evernote on the Evernote blog.

Summary

Whether you are stretching for a personal milestone, redecorating the living room or just headed to the store, Evernote can help you organize the details and serve as a place of inspiration. Prioritizing your personal life helps you refuel your passion for your work and be an even more successful entrepreneur.

Identify a spot in your personal world that Evernote can help make your life better. Being untethered isn’t just for work; extend that freedom to your personal life as well.

Untethered Toolkit

Get Going

Create notes to track your personal goals for the year.

Digitize information like your health care records, recipes or other items that take up space in your filing cabinet or on your bookshelves.

Use shared notes or notebooks to coordinate with others whether you are planning a trip or a move.

Dig Deep

In this chapter, we introduced the following tools. You can read more about the details of how to use them by clicking the links below:

Encrypting a note

Evernote Food

Emailing a note to Evernote

Chapter 8: Starting Your Untethered Journey

Through the course of the book, we’ve shown you how you can use the power of Evernote to support you in achieving your business and personal goals. You’ve seen workflows for some of our key focus areas, and you can use those ideas as a starting point to retrofit for your needs.

As you build your system, remember to tackle one challenge at a time. Don’t try to change everything at once, but instead pick something that’s a hassle for you, like managing receipts or organizing meeting agendas, and solve for how Evernote can help you make that easier. You might start with one of our examples, and then tweak it to apply to your work and organization structure. Once you feel like you are over that hurdle, then tackle the next challenge. After all, the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

As a recap, following are some of the key considerations as you select your tools and setup the structure for your untethered system.

Key Questions as You Build Your System

What type of Evernote account do you need to do the things you need to do – Basic, Premium or Business?

What other hardware or software do you need? Do you have a scanner? Do you need special software from the Evernote App Center to automate anything?

What structure do you want to use for your notebooks and stacks? Are you going to use naming conventions or tags to add keywords to notes?

What internal business processes could Evernote help you digitize or automate?

How can you use Evernote to work more collaboratively with your team and customers?

Are there any areas of your personal life that you could organize in Evernote?

The goal with all of this is to create a set of tools and workflows that support you in being nimble and flexible, not tethered to your desk or file cabinet. Being an independent entrepreneur should offer a sense of freedom in some regards, and Evernote can help you achieve that.

We hope you will join us on our journey as we continue to explore the ways in which we can use Evernote to support us in achieving our dreams and being our best. We are constantly discovering new ways to use this evolving tool and the third-party applications being developed for it. And, we’d love to hear your ideas and solutions. How are you using Evernote to get untethered?

You can follow us on our Get Untethered blog, with the Twitter hash tag #untethered, and join our Get Untethered Facebook group. And, don’t forget to check out the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources for updates.

Enjoy the untethered life!

Appendix A: Backing Up Your Evernote Data

If you are going to digitize your world, don’t forget to back it up. Even though cloud-based tools keep a master copy of the data online, you don’t want to be dependent on that if something goes wrong.

First, backup the local copy of your database as your part of your regular backup for your computer (and, if you don’t have a regular backup, start one now). Your Evernote database is stored in the following locations:

Windows: C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Local\Evernote\Evernote\Databases

Mac: /Users/[Your Username]/Library/Application Support/Evernote

You can also manually export any note or set of notes from Evernote by choosing File>Export Note(s) from the menu.

Exporting a note

Any selected notes are exported in either a .ENEX or .HTML format. The .ENEX format is compatible for Evernote-based applications while the .HTML file can be opened by a variety of software.

Picking a note format for exported notes

If you have a special note or set of notes that you want to ensure are available outside of Evernote, manually export it to a separate file as a precaution, and then backup that folder regularly.

Appendix B: Implementing Workflows

Workflows Covered in the Book

Following is an index of the workflows we illustrated in the book in order by author, with reference to the chapter in which it is discussed. If you found that one author’s style resonated more for you, this table should make it easy to find their material.

Workflow

Author

Chapter

Create and execute your business plan for the year

Kristi

4

Curating content

Kristi

6

Organizing client workflow internally

Kristi

6

Organizing recipes, grocery lists and dining out

Kristi

7

Personal goal setting

Kristi

7

Vacation planning

Kristi

7

Creating a collaborative workspace

Stacey

6

GTD task management

Stacey

4

Health management

Stacey

7

Manage leads

Stacey

4

Moving

Stacey

7

Store and reconcile receipts and expenses

Stacey

4

Managing team projects

Stacey & Kristi

5

Sharing with non-Evernote users

Stacey & Kristi

6

Team collaboration

Stacey & Kristi

5

Creating Your Own Workflows

Your company and situation are unique and you may have processes and procedures you need to solve for that we have not included. Following is a list of questions we ask when we are developing workflows for our clients and ourselves. Use these to help you dissect the challenge you are facing.

Questions to consider when developing a workflow:

How is the information organized or stored now?

What types of information are you collecting (PDFs, pictures, audio files, etc.) and is it physical or digital?

What type of information do you most often need to retrieve?

What works well with the current process?

What bottlenecks or inefficiencies, if any, currently occur with this process? Where are the holes?

How many notes do you expect to create for this topic or process? A few or many? Does it need its own notebook or can you use an existing notebook?

Is the work transactional or functional? For example, a real estate agent has a large number of clients who cycle out quickly (transactional) where as a software developer might have fewer clients for a longer period of time.

Do you need to share the information with others? If so, who? Are they internal or external? Are they Evernote users?

When and where do you need to be able to access the information? Only in the office? On the road? Using a mobile device?

How sensitive is your data?

As we ask these questions, we map out how the pieces of the process might fit together on a white board or using Post-it Notes. Be flexible as you are creating the workflow and regularly evaluate whether you need to revise the process to be more seamless. Workflows and tools are constantly evolving; don’t get tied to an old process just because it is always the way you’ve done things.

We’d love to hear what you create! Share your ideas and comments with us on Twitter or Facebook.

Appendix C: Recommended Applications and Tools

We rely heavily on Evernote companion applications and tools from third-party developers that integrate with Evernote. We use these tools to automate the process of creating notes and to more easily share information.

New third-party tools are released daily. Be sure to checkout our latest recommendations on the Resources page at GetUntethered.com/resources.

Evernote Companion Applications

Tool

Description

Chapter

Evernote Clearly

Create a distraction-free screen in your web browser for easier reading.

1

Evernote Food

Search and store recipes, explore restaurants and capture meals.

1,7

Skitch

Capture and mark up screen snaps, images and PDF files with basic drawing tools.

1,6,7

Penultimate

Application that allows you to create handwritten notes on a tablet using a stylus and sync them with Evernote. The notes are indexed and searchable.

1

Third-Party Applications

Tool

Description

Chapter

Dolphin

Browser for iPad and Android tablets that clips directly to Evernote.

5

Feedly

RSS Reader that allows you to quickly clip articles you want to save to Evernote.

1,7

FileThis

Digital retriever that pulls information from various billing accounts and adds it to Evernote.

1,4

Gmail

Google’s email application that includes ability to clip an email to Evernote. You can also connect your Gmail contacts with Evernote.

1

HelloSign and HelloFax

Digital signature and fax software that syncs with Evernote.

1

HootSuite

Social media management software that includes the ability to save a post to Evernote.

1

IFTTT

Digital retriever that allows you to connect other cloud-based services like Instagram, Twitter and Dropbox with Evernote.

1

LiveMinutes

A collaboration workspace tool for sharing notes and other documents. Notes are synchronized with Evernote.

6

SnagIt

Screen capture and annotation software by TechSmith that can export directly to Evernote.

1

Zapier

Digital retriever that allows you to connect other cloud-based services like Instagram, Twitter and Dropbox with Evernote.

1

Third-Party Hardware

Tool

Description

Chapter

Canon P215 Scanner

Portable scanner that that creates PDF or image files directly in Evernote. Offers multi-sheet, duplex scanning and separate business card scanning.

1

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100

Portable scanner that creates PDF or JPG files directly in Evernote.

1

Gratitude

A project like this does not happen without tremendous support from others. We are truly grateful to everyone who supported us in the writing of this book, particularly to Evernote for giving us a solution for our own lives, a tool to work with clients and the Ambassador program through which we met.

We extend a special thanks to Kasey Fleischer Hickey, the initial shepherd of the Ambassador program, for inspiring us, and to Mie Yaginuma and Joshua Zerkel for enduring our endless questions with openness and grace.

Our friends, clients and colleagues reviewed countless revisions and gave us incredible feedback. We are forever in your debt and, at a minimum, owe you lifetime Evernote technical support. In particular, we appreciate the tireless work of our assistants, Emma Chase and Lillian Sonnenberg, who not only pitched in on the book, but also managed so many other details so that we could focus on writing.

And to you, the reader, we are grateful for you joining our untethered community. We look forward to growing and learning together on this journey.

Special thanks from Stacey

Mom, your constant emotional and tactical support never goes unnoticed, even if I don’t express it as often as I think it – thank you for you unwavering trust in me. I love you.

Carolyn, without your influence on my life and unconditional support, I would have never thought it possible to create a career that led to this book. My gratitude for all you have given me over the years cannot be expressed in words. 

Grant, your daily encouragement of me and of this project has been heartwarming, soothing and impactful, particularly on the difficult days – W&F, and a BIG muah! 

And to Alex, I’m not sure where I’d be if you hadn’t taken me under your wing when you did and I am forever grateful. Thank you for being one of the greatest teachers in my life. This book is the first tangible result of your influence on the actualization of my dreams. May it be just the beginning.    

Special thanks from Kristi

I am blessed with incredible friends and family who, even when I fail epically, are willing to prop me back upright and remind me that they believe in me. I owe everything to the love and support of you, the people who never flinch.

Natanya, Jenna and Sandra, thank you for being my daily touchstones and sounding boards. I have grown more through your friendship, guidance and love than you will ever know.

Christina Randle and the Effective Edge team taught me that having a good system gives me the space to flourish, and that stretching outside my comfort zone is always worth it. Thank you Christina for encouraging me to dream big.

Ginger and Shane, you are my rocks. I am so lucky to have you both, and your incredible kids, to fill my life with love and laughter. Our family gives meaning to everything I do.

About the Authors

Stacey Harmon

Stacey is an overall curious person who has transformed her love of marketing innovation and process efficiency into a career as digital strategist though her namesake company, Harmon Enterprises. She most enjoys her role as a national speaker teaching strategies for branding in a digital age along with best practices for being productive with Evernote.

Her passion for Evernote has enabled her to become nearly 100% paperless, earned her designation as an Evernote Business Certified Consultant and resulted in her selection as Evernote’s Marketing Ambassador. Her highly digital orientation, although quite positive to her life, means she is generally miserable without a strong WiFi connection.

Residential real estate is Stacey’s niche, with nearly two decades of experience helping brokerages, agents and real estate affiliates better market themselves. Since starting Harmon Enterprises in 2008, she has expanded her client base to include small- to mid-sized businesses in several industries. Stacey can be found on Twitter at @staceyharmon.

Kristi Willis

As Principal of KW Solutions Group, Kristi uses her background in technology and learning and development to help her clients streamline their systems and best practices, create engaging learning and build thriving teams. She is as comfortable diagramming Evernote workflows on a whiteboard as she is programming an online learning module or facilitating a session on team trust.

As a long time Evernote convert, Kristi proudly serves as an Evernote Business Certified Consultant and the Freelancing Ambassador and loves teaching others how to use the software through speeches, online and virtual classes.

As passionate as Kristi is about technology, Kristi is equally zealous about food. She is a regular contributor to Edible Austin and Austin Woman magazines, Culturemap Austin and her own blog, Kristi’s Farm to Table. You can follow Kristi on Twitter @kristifarm2tbl.