Your Own Personal Assistant

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was starting my career, I had an assistant (we called them secretaries back then) named Ginger.

Ginger was incredible.  She kept track of everything.  She could put her hands on a five year old file as if she had just put it away yesterday.  She knew my schedule and kept me on it.  She had a place for everything, and no matter where I was, all I had to do was call Ginger and she would give me the information I needed to be brilliant.

I didn't have a two computers, an iPhone, a main office, a home office, and an iPad.  I had Ginger.

I desperately wanted to find a way to go back to the "good old days" when I could easily save, organize, and quickly find valuable information.  So I researched a few of the programs out there, and tried out the ones with good reviews.

None of them were as good as Ginger, but one came close......

How would you like to be able to access all of your information from one spot?  You can, with Evernote.

Evernote is a FREE program you can download on your computers, your cell phone, your iPad--wherever you access information. Evernote then syncs your saved information to all of your gadgets.

Whenever you want to save information-- articles, documents on your work and home computers, pictures, notes to yourself, emails, articles from websites, even videos and voice memos-- you can send it all to Evernote.  It's SO easy.  You just highlight what you want to save, right click, and you will see the option "Add to Evernote." Or if you don't highlight, it will give you the option to add the entire document.

If you have a phone where you can leave yourself voice memos, you can even talk to yourself and send the message to Evernote.

You can also text or email messages and pictures to your Evernote account.

Then, when you need the information, you can access your Evernote account from any computer or from your cell phone, and it is all there.

Did I mention Evernote is FREE?

If you are an organized person, you can put the information in Evernote into different files that are called "notebooks," so that you can save all of your personal and business information in the same place.

If you're like me, and don't want to fool with organization, you can send everything to Evernote and then find it quickly by doing a search. 

Here's an example of how I first used Evernote. 

I was planning a trip to Italy with a friend.  We started planning a year in advance.  Every time she sent me an article about Italy, or forwarded to me an email a friend sent her about where to stay, etc, I sent it to Evernote. Every single thing concerning this trip--airline or hotel confirmations, forums from travel websites, pictures, maps--all went to Evernote.

If I only wanted to save part of an article, I would simply highlight the part I wanted to save, right click, and select "Add to Evernote."

When we arrived in Italy, I found a wi-fi signal, got out my iPhone, clicked my Evernote app, and did a search for "Milan." All of my articles, emails, maps, and confirmations for Milan popped up in a list.

I didn't need to carry files, papers, travel books, maps, copies of confirmations.  It was all stored in Evernote.

There are SO many ways you can use Evernote.  The website has tons of suggestions and tips.  It is very easy to download.  The hardest part is getting into the habit of using it.  My suggestion is to start out with a project (Like my trip to Italy) and get used to working with it for that one project.  Then branch out when you feel more comfortable.

Now, if I could just teach Evernote how I like my coffee......