Name: Patrick Jones Location: Colorado, USA Website: Brain Injury Chaplain Uses: Evernote for Mac and Evernote for iPhone

We hear many interesting and unique stories from our users who tell us how Evernote helps them remember everything, but we never realized how important that could be until we got a note from Deacon Patrick Jones who uses Evernote to, literally, remember everything.

Deacon Patrick Jones of the Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs has sustained eight concussions since age 12 and as a result suffers from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), which causes severe short-term memory loss. In recent years, Traumatic Brain Injury has received some attention because it is among the most prevalent injuries sustained by veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

How Patrick Jones uses Evernote

In his day-to-day life, Patrick uses Evernote to help him piece together the basic memory flows we take for granted.

In a Psychology Today story published last year, Patrick tells of the process he went through to remember his connection to the article’s author who was calling to interview him:

“First, I got your email and had no idea who you were or why [we] were talking. The history in the email didn’t help much. So I searched “Gary Marcus” in my Mac’s Spotlight, which turned up an Evernote [note] on who you are and why we’re interacting, who put us in touch with each other, a log of our interactions, etc.”

The smallest memory connection becomes an active mapping exercise, helping Patrick to refresh his thought process in order to make daily decisions and engage with people in his life. This process includes taking notes, clipping articles, saving emails and images all into Evernote. When recalling the details of everyday situations, Patrick searches his Evernote account for keywords, tags, and text in images to solidify the memory. The resulting collection of notes help him trace and pull together the pieces of whatever task or connection he might be recalling.

“While I am able to handle various concepts, details disappear in a matter of days. Evernote is where I keep the details I need to reference later, linked to the concepts they belong to so they’re easy to find whenever and wherever I need.”

Aside from Evernote, Patrick also uses Curio on the Mac (an Evernote integration partner) and an iPhone which allows him to create diagrams of interconnected thoughts, replicating the way the mind normally wanders from thought to thought.

Patrick’s story is truly an inspiration. With the help of Evernote and other tools and skills, Patrick leads a rich life with his wife of 19 years and three children in Colorado where he is an author and carries out his ministry at Our Lady of the Woods parish in Teller County. You can learn more about his story on his site, which raises awareness about TBI. Also, take a look at his iPhone donation project that provides iPhones to individuals with severe memory loss.

Patrick’s latest project

With help from a community of volunteers, Deacon Patrick’s latest project, Mind Your Head Co-op, is launching in the coming months to provide support for other TBI-afflicted individuals. ‘Mind Your Head Co-op’ is a continuation of Deacon Patrick’s current TBI awareness campaign, Shoot The Moon For Brain Injury, which documents a collective effort to run 1.4 million miles with the goal to raise $100 Million for brain injury research and additionally fund Mind Your head.

“Every brain injury is different and what worked for me might not work for others,” Patrick says. “Medical science is somewhat baffled in terms of treating TBI. ‘Mind Your Head’ will be a resource for people to share their guinea-pig treatments and coping mechanisms with the greater TBI community.”

Through this forum, members can contribute their memory-retrieving techniques and methods, rate and comment on each others’ treatments and ultimately find an approach that works for them – like Evernote did for Deacon Patrick – so that they can, as he puts it, “Enter life as fully as possible.”

Donating Evernote Premium accounts

We’d like to do our small part to help Patrick in his efforts and will be donating 50 Evernote Premium accounts to the Mind Your Head Co-op.

To find out more, please visit: mindyourheadcoop.org