Posted by I am a big fan of Evernote. Since 2011, I’ve used Evernote to take the place of my paper notebooks. Its turned into my database of ideas, conversations, random thoughts, important documents, and daily planning. I also use it as a scanner and digital reader.
Instead of listing out features, here’s some ways I use the app on my phone and my laptop with some helpful links to get you started if your curious to try it out:
- Scan receipts – Whether its tracking business expenses or tracking my latest purchase at the Bass Outlet in Vacaville, scanning is super simple on my phone with Evernote. It auto-detects the receipt and cleans it up so good, it looks like I took it on a flatbed scanner. With Scannable, its even simpler and faster. Goodbye 3-in-1 printer!
- Interview and Meeting notes – Whenever I interview job candidates or prospective clients, I write what was said and record my thoughts about the conversation in Evernote. I can type >80 WPM thanks to my freshman high school typing class, so it is much easier to play scribe in Evernote than on paper.
- Capture screenshots during online meetings or take pictures of diagrams during an onsite meeting. I sometimes annotate these during the meeting or when I recap the meeting afterward to highlight and explain why the image is important. Evernote bought a company called Skitch way back which was integrated with Evernote to allow easy annotating on images on phones, tablets, or laptops.
- Scan business cards and find folks on LinkedIn. Evernote does this so effortlessly, that sometimes I just do it without even thinking. Its easy and fun too. I paid one of my girls once $5 to scan about 100 business cards with Evernote and she was done in less than half an hour! I was so relieved to be able to throw away the stack of growing business cards away and handle it all through Evernote from that day forward.
- To-Do Lists – I don’t need much for a To-Do list, so a checklist is good enough for me. I make personal and professional To-Do lists in Evernote all the time. Helps me stay on track, especially when I’m on multiple projects at home and at work.
On top of all these use cases, the beauty of Evernote is I can do this on my phone or laptop and have it sync across the two in seconds. I also share notes via email constantly and have an “Abundez Family” notebook which I share with my wife Jessica on important topics or documents we’re working on together. I still carry a notepad around but I’ve had the same one in my laptop bag for a couple of years. Doubt I’ll go through it this year.
Try it out and let me know what you think in the comments below! Or if you’re already an Evernote user, how do you use it?
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