My favorite piece of technology at the moment, by a country mile, has to be Evernote – which I use on both my laptop and tablet. It’s a simple, but highly effective, piece of note-taking software that has made my working life so much easier.

So why do I like it so much:

  1. No more notepad. This is “finally” the one-stop piece of software that now means I work almost paper-less. I certainly no longer carry a pen or paper with me whilst I work.
  2. My notes are where I need them, whenever I need them. Evernote is a cloud based service – which means if I take notes on my tablet, it synchs online when I’m next connected, so when I’m sat on my laptop all of my notes are there.
  3. Archived notes… forever. My notes are there for me stored locally and online so I can always refer to them if I need them (no more storing old notepads – full of content I then never looked at again)
  4. Notes are searchable. I can search for keywords and always find the note/text I was thinking of. Great for keeping track of actions in a meeting – write a reference for an action (I use a*). Get back to your desk, run a search for the word/phrase and there you have all uses of this action (to make this effective, you should remove the reference once completed – although results are sort-able by date so you can easily see current actions)
  5. Action Lists. I now have one constant note “weekly actions” that I keep open on my computer throughout the day. It’s a grid that sorts my week out into Am and Pm for each day. I can then add in to each grid an action list with tick-box icons (so I can mark when completed). This enables me to plan my week accurately, keep track of actions (no more notebook filled with daily to-do’s) and review at the end of the week (I work in an industry where we have to complete time-sheets so this is hugely helpful.
  6. Tagging notes. I can put in simple tags to each note I save – again making it easy to sort and keep track (I do this by client for example).
  7. Voice Recording. For those really important meetings, or for those meetings where you really need to listen (and where note taking detracts) I can click record (best on the tablet) and the audio from the meeting is captured and stored in the note. A great and very useful feature.
  8. Research. Now that delicious is no-longer, I now use Evernote to keep track of any web research I’m conducting (a holiday or client research for example) – an Evernote toolbar button allows me to tag web content and for the page/article to appear in my Evernote notebook for future reference.
  9. It’s free. There is a premium service that I might explore one day, but for now the free service does everything I’d want to do and more.

I’d recommend everyone to try it – even if you don’t have a Tablet, it works just as well on a laptop. I’ve been using for a month now, but am still finding new features and new ways of working with it.