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Neat Notes Snippets

most of us have a range of different note types. Notes in our phones. Notes on shreds of paper receipts from heaven knows where text files on our computer. Random voice recordings on our phones a half used Evernote account and a bunch of physical notebooks. We started and then abandoned. Almost everyone I know has notes scattered everywhere. In fact recently my friend joe polish of genius network and I love marketing Came to me for help with his digital organization. He had 10 different homes for his notes and various mishmash is of snippets from all of the events and masterminds he attends and no idea where to find things when he needed them. It is perfectly normal to have this mishmash of different types of notes after all. As taught in the G. T. D. Approach, we want to capture everything we might need to remember for reference. But while I'm a big advocate and teacher of memory techniques for memorizing important information that you use every day, the fact is your brain is for havi...

ng ideas, not holding them. But the reason that most people end up with so many different homes for their notes is because not all notes are the same. A lot of things that we consider notes actually belong elsewhere, such as on google drive or on your to do list. So how can we create order out of all this chaos? How can we take all different sorts of snippets and notes and get them under control. The answer is probably not going to surprise you by abiding by the # one rule of digital declutter by creating only one home for our notes. In this lecture, we're going to use our decluttering system to set up this one home and migrate everything else to where it actually belongs. You're going to end up with one digital cloud based home for all of your actual notes. Hold on though. We all know that in some situations paper is just easier to work with, especially when it comes to creative thinking or quick jotting other times recording audio or just taking a picture of a sign makes much more sense. So how can we have just one home and the cloud based home at that for all of these different types of information ranging from paper notes and journal entries all the way to audio recordings, pictures and typed up notes by choosing the right home. You see today's note taking apps are much more than their names would suggest. They are actually designed to suit the one cloud based home strategy that we advocate throughout this course. What's more if you choose the right one based on your needs and configure it properly. A good note taking app can become like an external searchable brain with unlimited memory. Let's talk about my absolute favorite option when it comes to making this happen. The note taking app, Evernote Evernote is a cloud synchronized freemium note platform that works on literally every type of device from a basic web browser to Mac and pc. Iphone and android and many, many more though I've been using Evernote for years recently. I hosted Charles Bird, the world's top expert on Evernote organization and productivity strategies for a full webinar and my mind was completely blown at how powerful Evernote can be when you use it properly. In addition to your basic text notes and occasional pictures, Charles teaches how you can upload audio files, file attachments, emails, web page snippets and just about anything else that you can imagine right into Evernote, like a digital scrapbook. What's more if you like to write handwritten notes or occasionally need to scan paper documents like receipts. Evernote not only scans them automatically, it also performs optical character recognition on all of it. So you can actually search for your notes based on what's written on them. It even does this in 28 typed languages and 11 handwritten languages insane with Evernote, the possibilities are literally limitless. You can handwrite notes and drawings on your ipad or your favorite paper notebook and scan them right into the app. You can type notes up on your computer or phone. You can voice dictate them while on the go. You can take snippets of websites and things you want to remember. You can automatically scan and process business cards and you can even take pictures of important things you see and search them later. Best of all. Evernote has more advanced features for power users such as templates to save you time. The ability to share publicly or with other Evernote users and thousands of integrations with other apps and services to automate your note taking and organization. But one of the biggest reasons why I love Evernote is because of its powerful search. We all know the frustration of creating folders upon folders and manually organizing things after all. That's why we encourage you to completely obliterate your folders during the email section of this course search is just so much faster and easier With Evernote you'll find the same type of organization structure that you have in your email inbox sure you can create folders and even automatically organize them with integrations if you want. But in reality with such a sophisticated search function you will be able to find any note anytime you need it in just a few seconds. Even if what you're searching for is a handwritten note you made in the margin of a notebook. Even if it's just a tag that you made to help identify the note. Even if the only thing you remember is where you were when you created the note, it really works that seamlessly and easily. And of course it goes without saying that all of your changes are instantly sync across all of your devices and stored securely in the cloud. So you will never lose another note. Now for many of you ever note maybe overkill or you may want to go with the minimalism approach of not downloading one more app. In this case. I want to give you some other alternatives as I do. However, please keep in mind whichever note taking app you choose, you must commit to it. You must get rid of everything else and merge all of your notes into one home. This won't work if you continue to keep pieces of paper floating around in your purse or desk drawer. First off, there's the built in notes app on your iphone Mac and other apple products. While it was once a very basic text notes app, I have to say that Apple has put in a lot of work and brought this app a long way over the last five years. It's still nowhere near as sophisticated and comprehensive as Evernote. But at least now you can draw in it with your finger or an apple pencil, create tables, attached pictures or to do lists and even scan documents. The biggest pro of using this app is that it effortlessly sinks to all of your other apple devices using ICloud and that it doesn't require you to download or sign up for another app. The cons however, are a lack of features like text recognition, voice recording file attachments, advanced search and more in general. I would say that the notes app is really only appropriate for people who want to keep it very basic even at the expense of a less cluttered life. If you're a google and android fan, you might instead wish to check out google keep though, it also works on Mac and iphone as well. Like Evernote Google Keep is clouds inked cross device and packed with features like reminders, text recognition, voice recording, web snippets, integrations and more like Evernote, it claims to have robust search and organization functionality that you might find it a little less user friendly. Google keep is a lot more basic and simplified but it's still much more advanced than Apple's Notes and it has a nice native integration with google drive. In addition to these three main options, there are a number of other solutions out there for Microsoft. One note to simple note to quip note, Joy dropbox paper and many, many more depending on your exact needs, you may find that a different app works for you than the ones that we recommended personally. I would strongly strongly recommend giving Evernote to try using the special link that we've included in the pdf syllabus, Pound for pound. It's the most feature packed and easy to use of all of the note taking apps I've ever tried and I think you'll quickly see why they've become the market leader but I will warn you it takes a little bit of time to set up and get used to and it won't be until you fully commit that you start to really reap the benefits for that reason if you are initially a little bit confused about how to use it and get the most out of it. Make sure to check out the pdf syllabus where you can join in on a webinar with Evernote is top top expert Charles bird where he will walk you through every single step of it. Once you've decided which note taking app you're going to use it's time to declutter. Set up your new system and actually implement it depending on the size of your notes collection, you're probably going to need to set aside a chunk of time to come through and declutter all of your existing paper and digital notes. You can start with your paper notes collecting all of the straight post, its notebooks, snippets and receipts, work your way through the pile, sorting everything into three groups. Recycle any paper that isn't relevant anymore. Action notes, Anything that requires action should be in your to do list, not lost in your notes, migrate all action related notes to your to do list, creating a separate task in your to do list for each item. For example, send invoice to accountant or by present for mom. And if you come across any official documents or PDFs you will want to upload those to your single cloud drive home. Keep migrate everything from your keep pile to your new single notes home. You're going to repeat the same for your digital notes. Don't get discouraged If it takes you a while that's quite normal, you've probably been accumulating notes for months If not years as you comb through your notes. I want to mention a common pitfall that I've seen throw clients for a loop, a specific type of note. I like to call collection notes. This can include things like meeting summaries, movie lists, book lists, recipes or quotes. These are static notes. We want to save for an indefinite amount of time or use for a future project but often end up scattered and lost when we keep them in our regular notes. For example, if you're an academic writer or a content creator, you may like to collect quotes or research notes for writing personally. I found that a helpful way to keep my regular notes depository organized is by migrating these specific collection notes to an external app. I like ulysses, a paid writing app that allows you to set up your own customized and super organized note collection, ulysses has essentially become my collections and writing home a single place where I can save the quotes, research and outlines that are essential to the writing process. That way I have one home for my regular notes and another home for my collections for tracking our booklist collection Jonathan and I both love good reads. It easily tracks are reading lists and helps us stay intentional about our book choices, whichever way you decide to go. We want to encourage you to remember the basics of digital declutter. Find one home for all of your notes, preferably a cloud based one, and then commit to it. Don't get distracted by actions, documents or collections. Those have their own homes from now on, whether it's a business card or a receipt, a handwritten note on the back of a napkin or notes you've typed up during a lecture. It all goes in its home for easy access later on down the line.