On the eve of an awesome day 1 of #EC2014 I wanted to summarize a few Evernote hacks our team uses to work smarter and do more faster.
1. Use a @today tag
I forget where I read about this but it definitely wasn’t my idea. Tag notes as @today and add a @today tag search to your shortcuts. At the end of each day, think about what you are doing the next day and tag relevant notes with @today. The next day you are ready to rock.
2. Use an Inbox notebook
I have a notebook called “Inbox”. The web clipper and email forwarding default to that notebook and sometimes when I’m in a hurry I create new notes in Inbox. Every few days I “process” the Inbox notebook just like I do with my physical inbox and Things inbox. It also lives under shortcuts so it’s always top of mind.
3. Use Evernote for Company meetings
I heard this tip from Phil on a podcast long ago. Every two weeks PivotDesk has an all-hands company meeting and multiple people update the company on parts of the business. Funnel analysis, KPIs, Customer Stories and a CEO update are all components of this meeting. I have a stack called “Company Meetings” and a notebook for each meeting. I invite contributors to the notebook in advance then publish it to the rest of the company the morning of the meeting. We typically have 5 -7 people attending remotely and the rest jammed in our conference room. We use Google Hangouts so everyone can see each other and then use presentation mode in the conference room as we talk through the data.
4. Use Evernote for Board meetings
In the past, as we prepared for an upcoming Board meeting we would discuss good and bad things in the business that had happened in the past few months and look forward a few months. We had a lingering feeling that we were forgotting to tell a fun customer story or leaving something out. Now, with Evernote, we create a new notebook immediatelly following a Board meeting that we use to capture data points, customer stories, articles and anything else relevant to preparing for the next Board meeting. This has eliminated the need for a long conversation to discuss what happened in the previous quarter because it’s already captured. This has been a huge time saver for our Exec team.
5. Use a shared Travel notebook for business development
Our team is constantly meeting with customers, partners and prospects around the country. As a 20 person company, each of us is very well networked in different ways. We have a “Travel” notebook that we share, each note is tagged with a city. If our CEO has a trip to LA in the next few weeks, we will clip LinkedIn profiles, articles and add notes about people to meet with, upcoming events and news in that city. Our CEO is able to leverage the reach and insights from everyone’s network to plan a productive trip.
About PivotDesk
PivotDesk is an online marketplace that connects companies with excess and unused office space to startups and small businesses that need flexible, month-to-month space to grow their business.
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