Evernote vs Google Docs
Hi all,
This may not be directly related to Nirvana, but I was wondering if people could comment on what they use to store reference materials and why. Ideally, I'd like to know more about Evernote and Google Docs.
Personally, I have been using Google Docs for two reasons:
1. Editable and exportable documents and spreadsheets
2. Can upload any sort of file, i.e. photos, pdf, etc
I tried Evernote before, but stopped using it due to bugs in the Mac version. This was several months ago, so things may have changed.
Please chime in if you've had experience with either applications.
Thanks!
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2 Posted by Proximo on 27 May, 2010 05:58 PM
I mainly use Evernote for my Reference items but also use Google Docs.
Google Docs. is my only Office type application. (This can't be possible)
I store MS Office documents, PDF's and Google created documents in the same system which makes it convenient for me. I also use Dropbox for some of my most important documents.
Evernote is used for capturing anything in my head, in front of me or on the web. I consider them different in what they try to accomplish. I would not try to use Evernote for the intended purpose of Google Docs and visa versa.
Evernote is great if you have an iPhone because it's very convenient to use at all times. Google Docs is also easy to access with my iPhone.
I can get into more specifics, but I hope you get the idea. They are both great and could be used together for each of their strength's.
3 Posted by mike on 27 May, 2010 06:13 PM
Thanks Proximo!
The mobile apps are of fairly large important for me as well. The problem is that the apps for Android aren't quite perfected yet. Dropbox, for instance, can't upload documents and Evernote has some pretty severe lagging when it comes to opening/creating a note.
I think you're idea of using Evernote as a capture tool is on target, I've just been emailing myself or Nirvana, but it's not very clean and I don't think you can email photos to Nirvana yet.
4 Posted by Proximo on 27 May, 2010 09:47 PM
@mike,
email attachments are not supported yet but coming in the future.
I think Evernote and Google Docs are both great and can be used as you see fit. I hope Android get's better with time because I would love to leave the closed iPhone eco system for something that is open in nature. :-)
5 Posted by Sim on 28 May, 2010 01:34 AM
Hi Proximo
Please shed some more light on how you manage reference files. Thanks.
6 Posted by Proximo on 28 May, 2010 08:09 PM
@Sim,
I like using Evernote for my reference files because it's web based and can be accessed from a browser, desktop application or my iPhone.
Here are some things I use Evernote for.
Receipts:
When I purchase anything or go out to eat, I take a snap shot of the receipt and put it in my Evernote. I do this for a couple of reasons. When I purchase something, I like to have proof of when I purchased it in case I need to return it. When I go out to eat, I like to have a receipt for tax purposes if it was a business related meal.
Capture things and Ideas:
When I see items that I would like to purchase in the future or things I would like to research on, I take a photo and store it in Evernote.
If my wife looks at an item at the mall that she seems to like, I capture it for a future gift idea.
If I see a sign at a convention about something I would like to look into further, I capture it for future research.
When I browse the internet and read a good article, paragraph or find something that is interesting to me, I use the web clipper and store it in Evernote for later use. This could be some CSS code on a forum that I think I may use or a Chart that shows some cool stats about something that interest me.
People I meet:
When I meet someone and exchange business cards, I capture their business card and send it to Evernote with some notes on where I met them and details of our encounter. I use this later if I need to call them or if I want to do business with them.
Capture a menu:
If I eat at a restaurant that I like to call in orders, I will capture the menu for later use. If I take an actual menu with me, I will eventually loose it or I won't have access to it when I need it.
Mind Dump
I also use Evernote to get things out of my head. I use the voice memo feature on my iPhone to capture some things I may need to do or some random thoughts that I will later process and could become task.
Airport Parking
When I travel, I take a picture of my parking section so that I can find my car when I return. :-)
I can go on and on about how I use Evernote to capture things that matter to me and store them in a Reference system that I can access from anywhere.
When you start to use Evernote, you realize how powerful and convenient it is. If you have a mobile phone that runs the Evernote app, you now how a powerful capture tool at your finger tips.
7 Posted by JamesT on 07 Jun, 2010 06:18 PM
Thanks Proximo for your info on Evernote.
I've recently been trying it out - I normally use OneNote, but since I have an iPhone I really wanted something available to me all the time on my phone and Evernote seems to nicely fit the bill. I'm going to try it for a while and if it works well I'll make the switch for good.
I have been having some trouble figuring out how to neatly integrate my use of Evernote and Nirvana. I was wondering if you or anyone else has already thought through this problem.
Specifically I'm wonder how people are handling their non-action GTD Lists. Things like "Restaurants to try" or "Wines to buy"
I was capturing some of those types of items in my someday maybe list on Nirvana. For example someone told me about a great restaurant recently and sent me an URL. I forwarded that email to Nirvana and put it into my someday maybe list and tag it with restaurant. Or wine, or whatever. You get the idea.
However, now with Evernote - I see a wine I want to try or a restaurant and take a snapshot of the label with my iphone. I've now created two different storage areas for of my lists. Two different in-boxes to process and two places to search. Not good.
I'm considering just keeping all my non action lists in evernote. Same with my higher level outcome lists like mission and vision.
How are you evernote GTD pro's handling this? Suggestions?
Thanks!
James
8 Posted by Proximo on 07 Jun, 2010 06:37 PM
@James T
It's a preference of course but I like to keep reference type information in Evernote. A nice wine to try is a reference item for me, so it will go into Evernote.
If on the other hand I needed to buy that wine for a Dinner party, this would go in Nirvana.
That's how I use them but it's still a user preference.
9 Posted by candeshouse on 07 Jun, 2010 06:48 PM
Since we are on the topic...can anyone explain to me the difference between Evernote and David RM's "The Journal"? I am in desperate need of a journaling software and have considered Evernote, however I do not have an iPhone and do not have admin rights to my PC at work, so there are challenges there.
10 Posted by Proximo on 08 Jun, 2010 04:46 AM
I use Penzu for my journal.
You may like it
http://penzu.com/
11 Posted by candeshouse on 08 Jun, 2010 07:38 PM
Thanks Proximo. I will check that out. Could you shed more light on what you would put in Evernote vs. Penzu? I can see the difference a little bit, but also see where one could serve both purposes, but that may be from my lack of understanding.
12 Posted by Proximo on 09 Jun, 2010 03:07 AM
Everonte is for reference material and Penzu is where I can type what
Stood out that day or week while reflecting on what I learned from it.
Sounds deep but it's really not. I find a personal joural rewarding
and it gives me perspective on things.
13 Posted by candeshouse on 09 Jun, 2010 12:34 PM
Perfect....thanks!
14 Posted by agold on 02 Jul, 2010 12:45 PM
New to Nirvana - so apologies if this "question" is mis-placed. Regarding project reference material, while I'm a fan of Evernote and Google Docs, can anyone shed any best-practices on how they integrate those (operationally) into Nirvana?
For example, I often want to "see" everything related to Project A in one view: next actions, waiting fors, and project reference material (at least from a search perspective). So, it seems a bit awkward for me if I'm in Nirvana and want to find all occurrences of "xyzpdq" then I have to search in BOTH Nirvana and Evernote.
Also, I love to save emails as part of project reference material, but it doesn't look like Nirvana has the concept of "reference material" - only tasks and projects. So, while I could certainly tag an email I forward to Nirvana as "reference", it is still considered a task.
Again, appreciate any best-practices folks use to manage this. Thanks much.
-Anthony
15 Posted by Mark S on 02 Jul, 2010 01:28 PM
If it's a customer based Project in Nirvana then my reference material is usually a folder in Google Docs containing all of the project related correspondence, in which case I put the URL to the Google Docs folder in the notes section of the Project header task.
I use GMail and it has a nice feature where you can convert an email to a Google Docs document so I use that to store relevant email correspondence as well as other documents and files in the project folder in Google Docs, with the URL in the Project header in Nirvana I can easily click to open the project folder.
(If you don't use GMail then I think you can do this by forwarding an email to your "secret" Google Docs email address and your email gets converted to a document, but I'm not sure on that point 100%).
However, if an email is related to a deferred Next Action then not only does it get filed into the Project folder in Google Docs it gets labelled @action in GMail and moved out of my Inbox (I'm committed to Inbox Zero in both Nirvana and GMail), forwarded to Nirvana and then when I'm processing my Inbox in Nirvana a direct URL link to that particular email is added to the notes section of the task.
If necessary, for a specific task, you can use the URL for a specific Google Docs file.
For example I often get documents or PDF files to review from our product development team in which case I have a task in Nirvana tagged with @review and a link to the Google Docs file in the notes area.
I use the same method for reference material in Evernote as you can have a URL to a specific notebook or a specific note. Although its normally only personal reference material I have in Evernote, on-the-go thoughts and pictures. Since Google Docs started to allow the uploading of any file type I'm finding my use of Evernote as a holder for project reference material dwindling.
HTH
16 Posted by agold on 02 Jul, 2010 02:24 PM
That’s an awesome summary Mark – thanks for sharing. I do have a few questions related to your setup, if you don’t my digging a bit deeper:
As any one email “thread” may have a lot of RE:’s, presumably only one of those has your Gmail @action tag. What do you do with the rest (assuming they contain relevant content for the overall task/project such as people’s opinions, etc.)? And, how would you handle the entire thread if it is all related to a single next-action task and nothing to do with a project?
Also, since you are only storing a link to the project reference material in Nirvana, might I assume that if you are looking for something (ie “what’s all the ‘stuff’ I have going on w/r/t “xyzpdq”) that you need to search in two places: once in Nirvana to see if you have any tasks/projects (open or closed) and then again in Google docs, and perhaps even a third search in Gmail.
For me, and ideal solution would be “one search to rule them all”. If Nirvana allowed for reference material (including email with attachments, documents, etc.), then that would be nirvana :-). But, of course, the amount of cloud storage Nirvana would have to setup would require customers to pay a reasonable fee (which I would certainly do, but I may not represent their target market).
I tried to setup a complete GTD system in Evernote, but there were too many problems. Ditto for ToodleDo, but their UI is horrible, and the system is not really GTD centric (ie no real concept of Projects). David Allen and co. have an OK plugin for Outlook, but it isn’t really portable to my iPhone and iPad. I love Appigo’s ToDo for iPad, but it too suffers from no concept of storing reference material – and there is no “desktop” app for it other than ToodleDo. Hence my search for nirvana.
Thanks again for sharing your best practices.
17 Posted by Mark S on 02 Jul, 2010 03:10 PM
Because GMail is conversation based, if a single email in the conversation is labelled @action then the whole conversation is labelled @action too.
This is great because not only do I not have to worry about making sure future emails are labelled but if a RE: email turn ups in my Inbox it's already labelled @action so it is highly visible.
(As an aside I also have @waiting as a label and use color coded label names for easier visibility, red for @waiting and green for @action).
Not sure what you mean about having to look in multiple places for "what's all the stuff I have going on w/r/t xyz" as I only have to look in Nirvana to tell me what's going on.
What's in Google Docs or GMail is simply reference material, it doesn't tell me anything about what I need to do or what's going on right now.
I can't look at a quotation I've prepared in Google Docs for a client and it tell me what to do next or anything else other than what I've quoted him.
In the same way, I don't want to be searching in GMail and trying to figure out what needs to be done from what emails I find.
I should already have done that when processing my Inbox, when I have a Next Action related to an email inevitably the Next Action is something like "Respond to this email from Fred ref Wilma's cooking" or "Send Barney a bowling schedule" and it is going to take me more than 2 minutes to complete.
So the relevant Next Action is created in Nirvana with a link to the original email so when I have the necessary time and energy to complete that Next Action I can easily find the required reference material (in this case the original email).
Your Next Actions define what you have going on and your reference material is simply that, reference material.
HTH
18 Posted by agold on 02 Jul, 2010 03:33 PM
I'm sorry Mark - I did a poor job explaining my question. Let me try again with a "real life" example:
I'm on the phone with our Chief Medical Officer, so I have my Agenda_CMO tag items open that I'm discussing with him. Most of those items are waiting for him to complete some action, each related to a different project. So, as we're talking, I'll generally update the notes section for each of those tasks. That gives me the history of the progress of each of those tasks/projects, which helps during weekly reviews for assigning next actions.
During those calls, I'll often refer to the notes in the various tasks (ie in Nirvana, the notes section of the task) to help guide our discussion - things he said last week, etc. I consider all those notes as "reference material".
In addition to the notes, there is email correspondence between us that is also related to the progress of those tasks. That is even more "reference material" that I'd like to refer to during our calls and during my weekly reviews.
So, some of the "reference material" is in the "task tracking" system and some in the "email system", and during our calls (or my weekly reviews for determining next actions and closing completed tasks) I have to "look in" both "systems". For example, during the call he might ask "how did we handle the issue with Lana?" which would result in a "Nirvana" search of that closed task with my notes on how we resolved it. Then, "what was the last thing we heard from Dr. O?" which would now be an email search for that email thread.
Again, having all that in one "system" would seem ideal.
19 Posted by Proximo on 02 Jul, 2010 03:43 PM
Great information Mark. Thanks for sharing.
20 Posted by Mark S on 02 Jul, 2010 05:19 PM
@Proximo, you're very welcome. Great community here, I'm glad to be part of it and (hopefully) contribute something worthwhile.
@agold, Thanks for the clarification, I see now where you're coming from.
Let me start by saying though that what you've described in your real life example is, to me at least, everything a "trusted system" should be.
You were asked to provide information on a number of topics and you could supply the information requested in short time with little effort.
What's wrong with that?
I struggled for a long time trying to get Outlook set up so I could use it in the way it seems you're after:
One "software" package that contains all tasks, appointments and reference materials (emails or documents).
The problem was that it's simply too much information to be shown in one window so I still found myself moving around between different areas of Outlook (emails/calendar/tasks) finding the relevant information when I needed it.
I soon realized that using different pieces of software to perform specific tasks as part of my overall "trusted system" is not a compromise and is really no different than keeping that information in separate areas of the same software.
I don't see looking in GMail for a specific email, Google Docs for a specific file or Nirvana for a completed task as looking in 3 separate systems as they're all part of one "system", mine.
It's my trusted system and the parts that make it up might be considered to be separate by some but to me they're all one, I know where everything is when I need it.
In my opinion that's what makes a complete system, not the fact that it is a single piece of software developed by a single company.
"Back in the day" we'd have had a diary, journal and file folders for storing different aspects of our day to day work. Are they different systems or just a part of the whole?
We still needed to look in different areas to find out different types of information.
I've used various CRM softwares in the past that offer the ability to do email/tasks/calendar/document management but again it's just simply too much overhead for a system that needs to be flexible and fluid to cope with the changing events of our normal working day.
I've pretty much ended up using any CRM as a way of generating financial reports for sales opportunities so the upper management are happy with the numbers in the pipeline and sales moving through the funnel.
Other than that they're all pretty much useless in terms of GTD.
But as a final caveat, it doesn't matter whether you use a single application like Outlook or multiple applications (like I do) the main point is that it has to work for you.
You have to organize it in a way that you can find what you need when you need it with a minimum of effort and you have to work at keeping it organized.
If that's not done then it doesn't matter whether it's one app or many apps that you use, you'll always find it difficult to be organized and on top of everything.
Sorry for the lengthy post but I struggled for a long time before I realized what (IMO) what a trusted system should be (although rereading this post it's a bit of a non-answer, sorry).
HTH
21 Posted by agold on 02 Jul, 2010 05:43 PM
Mark, many thanks for the detailed posting – I completely understand where you are coming from. And, the point you make about the system working for “you” is no doubt the most important point.
And, I can see how easy it is (at least for me) to fall into the trap of trying to “perfect” the system versus than perfecting the “art” of getting things done.
Again, thanks much for taking the time to present the details of your setup and your thinking behind it. Most appreciated!
22 Posted by agold on 04 Jul, 2010 08:03 PM
Mark,
I’ve been re-reading your comments in this thread, and I want to thank you again for the insights – it’s given me some great reflection points as I think through what works best for me.
One point that I didn’t quite follow: you mentioned that you use labels in Gmail such as @action (green) and @waiting (red). Do you not also use those contexts/tags in your Nirvana setup as well? I’m seriously considering switching from Outlook (Exchange) to Gmail, hence my interest in best-practices around using Gmail with GTD. If the Gmail message (assuming it’s related to a next action) is already forwarded to Nirvana with a link in the note pointing back to the Gmail thread, is there a need to add any “label” in Gmail?
Appreciate any guidance you can offer there or other best practices you've developed using GMail. Thanks again.
23 Posted by Mark S on 05 Jul, 2010 04:02 PM
Anthony,
The main reason I label emails like this is due to the face that because GMail displays emails in a conversation view when I label an email this way the whole conversation gets labelled.
This means that when I receive an email in my GMail Inbox that is RE: a subject I'm waiting for I can clearly see the red "@waiting" label in the list of emails in my Inbox.
I work hard not to continually check my email but only check it once or twice an hour (my opinion is that if someone needs a response from me in less than an hour then they really should be calling me on the phone).
And the same for @action emails, sometimes if it's a deferred Next Action some new or additional information can come through before I've got round to actually doing anything, so it's another visual tickler that an email is regarding an existing Next Action.
These visual ticklers help me process my GMail Inbox as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The other reason is more GTD related in that it's to do with making sure that once I pick an email up I have to decide what to do with it.
For many years when using Outlook I used a lot of folders to archive and store my email, I had many layers of nested folders and sub-folders which I thought at the time was an excellent way to store my email.
Meh.
My Inbox never really got processed and I found myself spending time deciding which folder to put emails into ("OK, so it's from Customer A so it should go in their folder but it's regarding Product B so it should also go in that folder..."), so I found copying emails into multiple folders which then also meant that any subsequent emails had to be copied into multiple folders too, and so on.
Then I read the first Lifehacker book and one of the tips was how to process your email Inbox more efficiently using only 3 folders.
@action @waiting Archive
(At the same time I was also reading David Allen's Getting Things Done). So I set up Outlook like that and spent the next few days clearing my Inbox, moving all my old emails from the complex, overweight, time-consuming folder structure I had into a single Archive folder.
And I made the effort to process my Inbox according to GTD (do it , defer it, delegate it, delete it).
Outlook quite frankly sucked.
And I found it more of a hindrance than actually helping me.
Then I got into GMail and found it to be a fantastic fit for how I liked to work.
With it's keyboard navigation, conversation view, labels, filters (any emails that aren't to me, EG. I'm a CC or its a mailing list email, get filtered straight out of my Inbox so I can look at them later when I have time), it was just a great fit.
Plus it didn't matter if I was on my work laptop, home computer, Blackberry (and later iPhone) or even my Netbook I could get things done whenever I liked.
One other point to consider, as this has happened to me before, is that by labeling emails this way I also have a kind of back up of some of my Tasks.
If for whatever reason Nirvana (or any other cloud-based task manager) goes down (I'm sure the ex-Toodledoers here remember the trouble they had with Rackspace) then you still have a way to work through your email related Next Actions (and possibly chasing up @waiting emails).
So, as I said, I make a point of keeping my Inbox empty so I need somewhere to put those @action and @waiting emails other than just in the Archive so I can find them easily no matter whether it's through Nirvana or simply in the GMail interface.
I hope this helps, feel free to keep asking away if you have any other questions.
Mark
24 Posted by Terminado on 05 Jul, 2010 04:37 PM
Mark, great information. I have a similar set up w/ gmail but also use @Read/Review.
25 Posted by agold on 05 Jul, 2010 07:12 PM
Mark,
Makes perfect sense, and thanks for the tips. Great stuff.
One interesting thing that I noted now that I'm making the move over to Gmail (which seems far more "usable" than Outlook) is that it shows ads that seem to be related to the email conversations. Interestingly, an ad for SmartyTask displayed for our email thread. Similar features to Nirvana minus tagging. Seems like new GTD applications are popping up all over the place.
Using Google Docs for project documents and other "repository" information seems like a terrific process, not to mention the real-time document collaboration aspect. Will definitely investigate that further.
26 Posted by Mark S on 05 Jul, 2010 09:07 PM
@Terminado, I used to do that too but now I just use @action and have the context tag (@review) in Nirvana.
No real reason other that I wanted to define my contexts in Nirvana not in GMail, whatever works for you though.
@agold, To be honest, I use Google Apps Premier so I don't see the ads.
But yes, there are an absolute boatload of GTD/task-management apps available.
I feel like I've tried most of them but Nirvana is the closet I've found to what I'm after in a GTD app without feeling like I'm trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
27 Posted by Ken on 13 Oct, 2010 09:34 PM
Didn't get through the whole post here....but...has anyone tried Diigo? I was looking for a way to highlight articles online and found this neat little toolbar
David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 02 Feb, 2011 09:55 PM.