Tech and life

I’ve just finished our annual mailing of Christmas cards – after tracking down our old address lists and address books to find all those addresses I need. In the past, I have used a card list stored on the PC and printed out but always had to go back to address books for the details and any address changes. I’ve decided to make things easier next year. All the contact details from this year’s list will go into a note in Evernote (tagged Xmas) so that they’ll all be easily found in one place next year. I’ll update any address changes there too, and add new friends and also email details where I have them so I can respond with eCards to some.

Yet another great use for Evernote.

Image credit: Kibondo

If you’ve had a PC for any length of time, you’ll have probably experienced the trial and error approach to getting things done. Whether it’s achieving a particular effect in Photoshop, converting files to different formats, exporting or importing data into different applications, setting up preferences for applications or plugins the way you want them, reinstalling applications, or setting up hardware, often you have to methodically change different parameters until you get things to work or get the right result. You may have had to search the web to track down the answer. You may even have to resort to a workaround which achieves the right result – but it’s quite rewarding when you finally crack it and master a procedure.

Problem is, when you go back a few months later to do the same thing, you’ve probably forgotten how you did it first time round so you have to reinvent the wheel. Enter Evernote your ’second brain’. Start a new notebook in Evernote called say ‘How-to’ and immediately you crack a difficult procedure, save the steps you used to achieve your result as a new note. Tag it with the app name or whatever best describes the action you’ve mastered. So when you need to recall that same procedure later, it’s safely tucked away in Evernote ready to be recalled when you search that tag in the How-to notebook. And if you think it’s a really good how-to, you could even share the notebook with everyone or with individuals.

If you haven’t tried Evernote, make a point of checking it out.