Bio

Joelle Alcaidinho is a freelance writer and consultant who splits her time between New York City, London, and Sydney, Australia working with tech start-ups, educational institutions, and retail organizations. As a writer, she covers topics ranging from technology to travel (you can find some of her posts about Evernote on Apartment Therapy). In addition to writing, Joelle designs children’s knitware and consults on UI/UX design for mobile apps. “Without Evernote, I’d be lost,” she says.

I use Evernote, Everywhere:

• Mac
• iPad
• iPhone 5
• Nexus 7
• Galaxy Nexus
• Galaxy Note II
• Microsoft Surface Tablet

I use Evernote for juggling all my projects. Between my travels and the great number of things I have going on (writing, consulting, running my Etsy shop), I needed a tool that could be there with me at all times. Evernote is a place where I can store a lot of important content at the same time, and always be able to access it. I used to have tons of notebooks around for sketching and writing. Evernote has become my digital version of these notebooks.

I keep separate notebooks for all my projects. For example, I have notebooks for my writing for Apartment Therapy, my technology blog, my travel guides, as well as my Etsy store. Because I’m always working on multiple projects at any given time, being able to compartmentalize is vital. Evernote is a great place to store work-related documents, such as meeting and conference notes, as well as more creative things, like pictures of fabrics and yarn that I like, or inspiration for a baby hat. I also create a notebook for each city when working on a travel guide, which becomes the place I keep all the information about which restaurants I visit, maps (I use Skitch to annotate these), and other essentials that I will need when I later craft the guide entry for The Tech Bird.

I use Evernote to save my research. For Apartment Therapy, I cover tablet apps for Android, Windows 8, and iPad, and because I write about different platforms I often change mobile devices from week-to-week. Evernote is the one constant. Coming up with fresh ideas every week is exhausting, but with Evernote I’m able to keep track of interesting apps throughout the weeks so that when I’m ready to sit down and write I always have a starting point. I tag apps I come across with ’roundup ideas’  and also store various templates and HTML snippets in Evernote for handy reference. Half the work associated with preparing a blog post is done before I even begin writing!

I use Evernote on the go. In addition to my tech writing, I also do a lot of travel writing. When I’m working on a travel guide, I use Evernote to take photos of the signs of the places I visit, menus, and anything else I want to remember. My notes are all geo-tagged, so it’s easy to organize them and have all my notes associated with a certain location in the same place. I also snap photos of my receipts so I’ll remember what I ate and can easily submit expense reports.

I record interviews that I can replay later. When I am working with a client on a consulting project, I use Evernote to record conversations. Audio notes allow me to concentrate on the conversation I’m having, while also allowing me to revisit it later when I’m in brainstorm mode.

I’m able to achieve long-term goals. Evernote played a key role in helping me complete NanoWriMo last year. Before it began, I went into Evernote and was able to pull together a bunch of ideas I had been saving for a long time that were related to a novel I was hoping to write. Once NanoWriMo kicked off, I was already ahead of the game and was able to jump into writing. Evernote has been a huge help with my novel and I find the marriage between Evernote and Scrivener to be all kinds of awesome.

I’m able to be more creative by letting go of ideas. Evernote helps me compartmentalize ideas, which takes away the stress of having to remember them. Whenever an idea pops into my head, I always have a device handy. Evernote is consistent and accessible everywhere, so I can capture my thoughts and move on. The effect? I’m able to clear my mind and focus on other things; this gives me the freedom to be more creative. Once I save an idea in Evernote, I know I can mull the possibilities later. This is helpful both for creative and tactical projects. I’m able to stay on top of to-dos and also come back to ideas that I may not necessarily have an an immediate use for.

How do you use Evernote to organize your professional and personal lives? Share your stories in the comments!

Bio

I am a serial multi-tasker with the chronic inability to do only one thing at a time. For this reason, it is common that a sudden (and useful) idea hits me while I am in full swing working on something completely different. Over time I learned that the only way to transform this handicap into a resource is to have a way to capture these ideas quickly and at any time. In 2009, I started working on my own in online and offline content, advertising and design strategies, and wedding planning from A to Z with my company fatamadrina (fairy godmother).

I use Evernote, everywhere

• Mac
• iPhone

I use Evernote to…

I use Evernote for three distinct purposes: to capture ideas related to my personal life, my work life, and my family life. I have a separate notebook for each of these, where I archive notes freely by content and function, including a dedicated Shared Notebook that I use to exchange advice regarding book, movie and television recommendations with my brother.

For me, the beauty of Evernote is that it can be used to organize every facet of my work and personal life in as simple or complex of a manner as needed. It is precisely for this reason that I recommend it to all the future brides I work with who are grappling with the huge task of organizing their own wedding. It is the only productivity app that manages to meet my convenience and immediacy needs.

Evernote for Organizing My Work Life

Organizing blog posts and editorial projects. I create a note for each blog post idea, as well as for any  editorial projects I plan to propose to customers, and text for promotional materials for my business.

Wedding planning. Every wedding that I organize involves an ad hoc creative project. I create a note for each of these, where I save inspirations and ideas.

Tracking tasks and reminders. I use check-lists to keep track of some of the services I provide to newlyweds, including to remind myself of all the tasks I need to accomplish, and any administrative actions I need to take care of.

Capturing Ideas. I have a ‘personal’ notebook, where I upload everything, including random web links and ideas that I come across or that come to mind, which are not associated with a specific project. I can then reference this notebook later to find inspiration that is relevant to new projects. I also keep a note for each project I’m currently working on, and load it full of ideas and related images I find in magazines, books, the web, and even things I see on the street or on television.

Evernote for Organizing My Daily Life

Creating to-do lists. In my ‘personal’ notebook, I keep a set of notes with a checklists that help ensure I never forget what needs to get done. From travel packing reminders to shopping lists of items I regularly need to pick up to daily cleaning tasks, I can keep track of it all with Evernote.

Remembering important family information. I have a note in which I list all the medicines that we use frequently or that we have used, so that we can easily coordinate any new prescriptions with the family doctor and pediatrician. Evernote makes it fast and easy to look up a wealth of our family’s important medical information, as well as any information and tips the doctor has given us. For convenience, I also started to record the relevant details of our children’s health (such as growth statistics, illnesses, particular care) to have them at-hand in case they are needed, or during visits to the pediatrician.

How do you use Evernote to keep your daily life organized? Share you stories in the comments!

Bio

After a year of travelling around Australia, quenching his thirst with delicious Aussie Iced Coffee, Jim Cregan returned to the UK to a lot less sunshine, even less surf and a sweet and sickly version of the iced coffee he’d enjoyed on the other side of the world. So, in true entrepreneurial style, Jim and his sister decided to make their own.

Jim uses Evernote for every aspect of his business; everything from capturing important meeting notes to sharing exciting new ideas, as you’ll see from his video as the UK’s Small Business Ambassador.

I use Evernote, Everywhere

• iPhone
• Mac

Evernote makes running my business so much easier:

Evernote helps me to be more efficient and save time. I am always researching my industry online. It is vital for me to be able to find information easily. Whether it’s doing research about the milk, coffee and iced coffee markets, distribution, supermarket trends, macro and micro stuff, I need to be able to search for it, capture it and then find it again either when I’m on the move or in the office. It’s so much easier to use Evernote than saving it in Safari or to my computer. With Evernote I can save it to all devices, tag it and then find it quicker.

I have just started using Evernote Business. I was one of the first to use Evernote Business in the UK and I love it. I can now communicate more effectively with my colleagues. It creates the ideal situation for small and fast-growth businesses because the whole company can seamlessly discover important company information, as well as storing their own knowledge about the business, which will never get lost.

I use Evernote Web Clipper. To save blog posts, as well as images and reviews about my business that I find online, I simply clip them into my Evernote account. This is great for when I do presentations to buyers, shareholders and investors, as I can pick out real life images and comments very easily, which makes presentations look great.

I use the forwarding email function. Evernote email is brilliant.  I used to email myself things that I had to do, but they would simply get lost. I can now email myself a to-do list and simply place a #TODO at the end of the subject line and it saves it all to one spot.

I use Evernote to manage and save my ideas. I work on a whiteboard a lot so it’s good to photograph these and save them to Evernote.  I can then happily erase the whiteboard and start again!

Evernote is great for saving important photos. Taking photos of stuff and saving them to Evernote is useful for me, especially when I’m on the road. I’ll see a truck which distributes food and drink products and I’ll photograph it then save it to Evernote under #distribution.

As long you can have all your memories in one place, then everything just becomes easy, which is epic!

• Name: Alex Karpman
• Profession: Entrepreneur
• Location: Los Angeles, CA
• Website: www.datevitation.com
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/datevitation
• Twitter: @datevitation, @alexkarpman

Bio:

Alex Karpman is the founder of Datevitation, a company on a mission to inspire couples to be more romantic and have fun together. His website hosts an abundance of date ideas, videos, and custom love coupons to help you be more creative with your special someone. Alex shares how Evernote and Skitch helped him with his business, and even helped him plan the perfect proposal to his fiancé, Olga.

I use Evernote, Everywhere

• Mac
• iPad
• iPhone

I use Evernote + Skitch for…

Planning the Perfect Proposal with Skitch

I first met Olga on a plane in 2005 and felt an instant connection, but we were both in relationships at the time. We stayed in touch, and when we found ourselves single last year, we reconnected and started a relationship. I quickly fell in love with Olga and her daughter Eva, and knew I wanted to make them a permanent part of my life. I started to cook up a plan to propose to Olga in a way that would include Eva, too, and make it a special day for all three of us. I finally settled on constructing a huge sand castle so Olga could be my queen and Eva could be my princess.

As you can imagine, this wasn’t a simple task and I needed to enlist the help of a sand sculptor to make the proposal perfect and a videographer to film the whole event. I initially set up set up a conference call to get the whole thing planned, but after a long and frustrating conversation I began to feel that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. It was so tough to get my point across, and I knew that if anything in my plan was off, the magic of my proposal would be ruined. Then, I realized how much more simple Skitch would make the whole process. I searched images of the beach where I wanted to propose and marked them up with Skitch to show where I wanted to build the sand castle, how I wanted to approach it with Olga, and where I wanted the videographer to be positioned to catch the looks on Olga and Eva’s faces. It took no time at all to do this, and both the sculptor and videographer instantly understood exactly what I needed. I couldn’t have been more pleased with how my plans turned out, and both of my girls said yes! You can watch my proposal to Olga and Eva here and see firsthand how, with the help of Skitch, I was able to pull off this incredible proposal.

Evernote for Everything Else…

I used Evernote to clip ideas and do research when I was buying a rental property and doing renovations. Being able to save and search for every little detail is really handy when you have a lot of smaller things to keep track of.

I save places I want to visit in my Evernote account – when I get to take a vacation, I already have a lot of ideas and planning at my disposal. Getting away is so much easier when I’ve done the work in advance!

Whenever I want to make a bigger purchase or get a gift for Olga, I like to do a little research to make sure that I’m getting just the right thing. Evernote lets me keep all my ideas and information in one place so that I can make sure I’ve thought of everything when I finally make my decision. Check out my blog to see more about how I use Evernote for picking the perfect gift!

Making My Business More Efficient

I was a lawyer for 5 years before I decided to make a change and pursue a radically different career as an entrepreneur. Starting up a business requires a lot of organization – I was constantly communicating and sharing ideas with my designer and developer, and I needed tools to make sure we were always on the same page. Evernote and Skitch have helped me coordinate with all the various parties I’ve needed to work with to make my ideas into reality.

Gathering Inspiration

As I worked on fine-tuning my vision for how Datevitation would look and feel, I used the Evernote Web Clipper to save articles, designs, and ideas that inspired me and kept them in a notebook that I shared with my designer. This way we both could view all these resources anytime we needed to reference them for a part of the design process.

Skitch has taken a lot of the hassle out of giving feedback on projects. Before Skitch, I would spend hours crafting ridiculously long emails to my developer to describe exactly what I wanted. Usually, I wouldn’t be able to get my point across 100% correctly anyway. Now, I just snap quick screenshots and use arrows or circles to indicate exactly what I want moved or changed on the website. Having the ability to visualize what I’m trying to say is critical to communicating with my team, and it has saved me an incredible amount of time and money.

Bio

Jenn Vargas is a Product Manager at Etsy working on Search and Discovery. She is also the creator of accompl.sh, a community-oriented website to help people achieve their resolutions. Her online time is divided between three things: connecting, browsing, and creating. She occasionally blogs at Jenn the Geek, browses around tumblr and posts photos to flickr.

Evernote, Everywhere:

• iPhone
• iPad
• Mac (home and work)

I use Evernote for…

I started using Evernote in 2008, while I was still in school. I was taking class and research notes in Evernote, clipping resumes (with an eye towards layout and language), as well as various things I saw and liked on the web. When I started working at Etsy, I dove into using Evernote to help me capture inspiration for various side projects without taking my attention away from work. Evernote lets me work at my own pace on work and personal projects, all in one place. Here’s how I make Evernote work for me:

• I never delete things from my Evernote account because it’s really interesting and fun to read my old notes, and especially seeing the sorts of things I was clipping around a certain time period. Sometimes I’ll look at something I clipped and think, “Oh my god, what was I thinking?” Evernote is my inspiration museum.
• Because I’m constantly clipping design inspirations, I can often browse through my notes and really see how design trends move. For instance, there was a time I was clipping a lot of sites where a ribbon came down the front of the page. There were a lot of drop shadows — it was very web 2.0 and grungy. Now, I’m definitely seeing that most of my clips reflect the trend towards a clean, industrial Mac style.



• I take photos of magazines with Evernote, noting particular design aspects that stand out to me. I particularly love Lucky for their layouts and the way they play with color and Wired for their pictures.
• I use Evernote in combination with Skitch. When I take screenshots or clips, I’ll often mark them up with notes, arrows and circles so that I can remember what I liked about a particular website, font, color, image, or placement. It’s super visual. At Etsy, I work on the API, developer community and crafter community, seller education, and search, so I do a lot of research around developer and seller experiences. Together, Skitch and Evernote help me identify things I think will and won’t work – especially in certain marketplaces.
• I’m usually pretty good at tagging my notes. For the most part, I tag notes based on specific design or project elements. For example, ‘design inspiration layout,’ ‘design inspiration logo,’ ‘activity streams,’ and ‘color.’ With Evernote’s powerful search, I can instantly pull up every note I’ve taken related to our activity stream or fonts.

Moving a side project forward

What I love about Evernote is that it’s a place for me to capture what I want to capture, when I want to capture it — without devoting a ton of time to figuring out how to organize it or when I’ll need it. Outside of work, I have a bunch side projects, and Evernote lets me move them forward without devoting 100% of my attention to them all the time.

For example, one of my projects is accompl.sh (formerly known as 101in365) — it’s a community-oriented site aimed at helping people complete 101 goals in one year. I used to make an ordered list of resolutions on my blog every year, but I found that it wasn’t very motivating or easy to keep track of my goals. I thought that I would be more likely to fulfill my resolutions if I was accountable to people other than myself. accompl.sh has about 2500 members now. On the site, you can create your own list of resolutions, comment, add photos and be more likely to stick to your resolutions.

I had been working on redesigning accompl.sh for weeks; Evernote really helped push it through. Even while I was at work, I could clip design inspirations from the web and throw them into my Evernote account. It takes hardly any time at all to take note of something. When I would get home, I could go through all of my clips, see them visually, process my thoughts and dive into the redesign, piece by piece.

Use it when you like it

Having Evernote installed on all of my devices means that I can use it whenever I feel like it. Sometimes, I take more work-related notes (especially around a big design project), and others I’m more focused on using Evernote for fun stuff. Either way, it’s always accessible to me — it’s my own curated place of discovery.

Twitter: @joshuazerkel

For some of us, January is the month of resolutions and fresh starts. For others, it’s Get Organized Month.

We’ve enlisted the help of Joshua Zerkel, a Certified Professional Organizer and the president of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, to help us get our act together.

Joshua on Evernote

If you are tired of trying to keep track of every detail in your life, it’s helpful to look for tools that can offload some of that mental overhead. One of the best tools I’ve found for doing this is Evernote – it’s a fantastic (and powerful) note-taking tool, which helps to capture all sorts of different types of information. I’ve implemented Evernote both in my own business and with my clients in a variety of ways to help them streamline some of their processes and save them time. Here are a few ideas for how you can do the same:

6 Ways Evernote Can Boost Your Productivity

1. Snap your scrap paper

Instead of trying to rework how you do everything, try using Evernote in little pieces. Start by taking snapshots with your cell phone of all the scraps of paper that you have scattered around your office – your sticky notes, the backs of envelopes, scrawls on napkins, etc., and then put them all into Evernote where they can be searched later. You don’t have to stop using your written notes right away, but over time, you may find yourself needing them less and less as you transition to using Evernote more and more – especially as you discover how handy it is to be able to search your notes and actually FIND what you’re looking for!

2. Capture the whiteboard

Meetings with other professionals can be productive, but taking notes can be a real chore. At your next meeting with a client, vendor, or consultant, instead of frantically writing down notes from the meeting and trying to copy everything that’s written on a whiteboard, try snapping a photo of the whiteboard with your phone, and send that pic to Evernote. Since Evernote can read the handwriting in the photo, you’ll be able to easily search for and refer back to that whiteboard later on when you need it.

3. Share the love

If you work with clients and you’d like to share information with them, set up a shared notebook in Evernote dedicated to that client. In it, you can capture clips from web articles they might like, snapshots of resources that they could find useful, ideas for upcoming meetings or sessions, or links to online applications they may find helpful in their day-to-day lives. This can be a HUGE value-add to your clients and the people you serve – not only are you introducing them to a new tool (Evernote), but you’re populating their notebook with stuff they’ll be interested in.

4. Wrangle the receipts

I work a lot with clients on financial organization – keeping track of the money is super-important in the world of business and in life. When you’re busy and on the go (and who isn’t?), it can be a challenge to keep track of your receipts and other expense items. Instead of losing your receipts or stuffing them into a box, bag, or drawer, try snapping pics of your receipts and send each of them to a “receipts notebook” in Evernote. That way, they’ll all be captured in one central area.

5. Tie up your travel

If you travel for your business (or even just for pleasure), create a notebook dedicated to each upcoming trip. In it, you can keep any notes you have about an upcoming meeting or trade show, along with the agendas, location, maps and any venue information. Also, this is a great spot to keep details about your travel – flight confirmations, hotel and car reservations, and the like. You can even collect clips about restaurants, local attractions, and other fun things that can help you enjoy your trip more.

6. Centralize your storage map

You can also use Evernote to keep track of the storage in your home or small office. Take snapshots of everything that’s on each of the different shelves and inside of the different drawers, cabinets and containers in your storage system. Now, instead of having to dig through a shelf, drawer or closet, you can just go on your computer and quickly scan and review what’s there – making it easier for you to access and retrieve those things that you actually want at the moment when you need them. If you have multiple people in your business, you can share this note or notebook with them as a team reference.

Any one of these strategies can help gather your information in a central spot, and can definitely help save you time. Try a few different ways of using Evernote to boost your productivity – I think you’ll be surprised at how much it can help you!

Evernote and Organization

• How to Unclutter with Evernote and Rubbermaid in 4 Steps
• 5 Ways to Organize Your Busy Family Life — Guest post by Erin Doland
• 5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential — Guest post by Lorie Marrero
• Using Evernote to Solve Everyday Organizational Challenges — Guest post by Deb Lee

• Mac
• Windows
• Phone: Evernote Mobile Web (http://www.evernote.com/m)
• iPod Touch
• Evernote Web

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

John Andrews is a chef and manager of Victoria Station in Salem, Massachusetts. Over his fifteen years in the restaurant business, John has figured out many ways to deal with the immense organizational challenges of operating a restaurant. With Evernote, John has created a system that keeps him sane and keeps his restaurant running smoothly.

Why Evernote Works For Me

Evernote has become a critical tool for running my restaurant, Victoria Station. Operating a restaurant is so much more than cooking the food–it’s a huge juggling act. My biggest challenge is dealing with the sheer amount of information being thrown at me from every possible angle. I need a place to put it all, and for me that place is Evernote. Getting that finished dish onto the table takes tons of coordination. Here are some of the ways that Evernote helps the restaurant function.

1. Coordinating food vendors

In any given week, I might interact with 10-15 different vendors and purveyors, each with their own product guides and point of sale flyers for any new items. Multiply this by the hundreds of products from each vendor, plus the need to maintain a fully functioning kitchen seven days a week and you can see how it could easily get out of control. To keep it under control, I throw everything into Evernote.

2. Finding new ingredients, creating new recipes

Today’s culinary consumer is well-informed, which makes my job of coming up with unique dishes on a daily basis a challenge. Since I don’t like to limit myself to one style of cooking, I tend to do a lot of research online, especially for new products and ingredients that I haven’t used before. With Evernote, I can clip or email ideas into my “Recipes and Food Ideas” notebook from my computer or phone. Then, whenever I do a search, not only does Evernote display the product, but also any related ideas, along with information on which vendors carry that product. I have also shared this notebook with some fellow chefs so that they can contribute their ideas, as well.

3. Keeping everything organized wherever you are

I spend most of my time in the kitchen, which means that I don’t always have access to a computer during the day. Having Evernote on my phone is a big deal because it allows me to stay on top of things wherever I may be. If I get an email from a vendor for an interesting product or an important proposal, I just forward it along to my Evernote account. Then, later when I get back to my desk at work or at home I can pull it up in Evernote.

4. Getting rid of paper clutter

As a chef, I work long hours and the last thing I need is to waste time reorganizing paperwork (receipts, bills, etc) or spending additional time trying to locate loose papers that become lost in the clutter. With Evernote and my scanner, I easily convert the paper mess into digital notes that are always available whenever I need them.

A sampling of some of the vendor flyers and product sheets

5. Staff training

I have specific notebooks for Wait Management and Service Training. I keep all relevant training documents and information in these Evernote notebooks. Whenever I find something new, I simply tag it (waitstaff, kitchen, management) and then add the name of the restaurant. This way, I can pull up specific information for my current restaurant or establishments that I have managed at in the past.

6. A complete backup of my Food Life

Having all my information backed up and available on multiple computers is an essential feature for me. I ran restaurants in the past, and whenever I left, I lost years of specials and ideas that I would love to have back. Now that I have Evernote, I have everything backed up and available in my account. I’m no longer tied to a single computer that I may not have access to forever. Now, wherever I go, my ideas stay with me.

7. Keep track of your ideas for a website redesign

For the redesign of our website, I created a Shared Notebook to share ideas and inspirations with our graphic designer and webmaster. I clipped images and pages that I liked from other restaurant sites. I also saved all the graphic work that my designer created. The three of us are able to access the shared notebook at any time to pick and choose what we need for the project regardless of what computer we happen to be using. I can also remotely check the progress of everything using my phone to make sure things are being handled efficiently.

This photo is on the home page of our website. Evernote allowed me to save a high-quality image, and then share it with the designer without worrying about email restrictions.

8. Collaborative menu creation

The shared notebooks work great for collaborating on creating a menu with other managers and chefs at my restaurant. I also take pictures of finished dishes with my phone, pop the pic onto my desktop, add descriptions and recipes, then share with the others. This way everyone can know exactly what the finished dish should look like, and have a record of each dish.

9. Catering projects

Whenever I need to work on catering projects and functions menus, I use Evernote as a way to keep the menus organized with my function coordinator and day manager. If they have any questions about what type of event it is, how the event should be set up, or how the food should be presented, they can go to my Functions shared notebook in Evernote. There they can access the contract, menu, table setting, and food instructions. I keep everything tagged with the name of the event for easy searching.

10. A system designed by Me for Me

The best thing about Evernote, is that the system is completely open. It is really only limited by your imagination. Evernote is so flexible that I was able to adapt it to work specifically for me. Once I came up with my system it was able to do everything I needed. As a chef, I was able to integrate it into my work-flow and perfect it, rather then having to adapt my work-flow to fit into an already established system.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• Caleb Troughton profile: A food blogger uses Evernote to keep track of ideas, food experiments and recipes

Blog: Food Goes In Mouth
Twitter: @foodgoesinmouth

Part of Evernote’s Food Month

Caleb Troughton is a web developer, blogger, and Evernote user from the Central California coast. His blog, Food Goes In Mouth, follows him through experimentation, development, and cooking of fantastic original recipes.

Caleb describes his cooking style as daring and instinctive; he rarely sticks to straightforward recipes–rather, he often plays with ingredients and always takes photos of his delicious and, occasionally, unexpected creations.

How does Evernote help you?
I use Evernote to record ingredients and recipes for my shopping, cooking, and blogging. During my day job, whenever a recipe inspiration hits me, I record the idea in a text note. Before I go to the store, I look over my notes and start testing things in the kitchen. I am constantly editing and revising the note as I go. Evernote is my whiteboard. It’s where I can play around with flavors in my head, without needing to be in the kitchen all day long. Over time, these notes evolve into complete recipes and eventually blog posts.

Here’s an example of a recipe brainstorm, which led to the recipe below:

Caleb shared one of his original recipes with us. You can clip the recipe below.

Vegan Umami Risotto (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Arborio rice
• 1/8 cup barley
• 1/4 cup fresh white corn
• 1/4 cup fresh shiitake mushroom, diced (4 mushrooms left whole)
• 2 medium-sized shallots, finely diced
• 15g kombu (dried kelp) sheets
• 2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil
• Fresh italian parsley
• Fresh tarragon

Instructions:

• Spread the barley out on a baking sheet and dry roast at 425°F for 5 minutes. Set aside for later use. Take equal parts of fresh parsley and tarragon and finely chop.
• Set aside 1/4 cup of this mixture.
• Make kombu dashi by following these four steps. Clean the kombu by wiping it with cloth, soak it in water, heat that water to just below a boil, and remove the kombu. For the amount of kombu I’ve listed in the ingredients, you will want to use approximately 8 cups of water.
• Keep the heat on the kombu dashi so that it stays just below a boil. The dashi will be our stock for cooking the risotto.
• In your favorite skillet heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add shallots and some salt and cook until translucent.
• Add the Arborio rice and roasted barley. Stir, coating the grains in oil and keep cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for two minutes.
• Kick the skillet to high heat. Pour a ladle of the dashi into the skillet. Start stirring.
• Whenever the bottom of the skillet is visibly dry, bring another ladle of the dashi over. Always keep stirring. You’ll notice things start to get creamy and thicker almost immediately.
• After 10 minutes of this, add the corn. Continue with the cycles of adding dashi.
• After another 8 minutes (18 minutes total now) add the diced mushrooms and continue.
• At 25 minutes, make your next liquid addition your last. Things should be al dente at this point. If not continue the cycle until you reach al dente.
• During the last addition, salt the risotto to taste.  I avoid adding salt before this because with all the liquid reduction going on, it may become easy to overdue things.
• When the bottom of the pan is nearly dry, add the whole mushrooms on top of the risotto, cut the heat, put a lid on the thing, and walk away for 3 minutes while the mushrooms steam a bit.
• Remove the lid and stir in the fresh herbs.
• Serve up a pile of risotto and top it with one of the steamed shiitakes.

Visit Caleb’s blog to see more delicious recipes.

Food Month posts

• Welcome to Food Month
• Cooking up memories: Digitizing a prized family recipe book into Evernote
• San Francisco tasting event with Foodzie.com
• The things I ate in Japan: A visual culinary diary of our CEO’s trip to Japan
• 10 Ways to Run a Restaurant with Evernote Chef John Andrews shares how Evernote helps him run a restaurant
  

Hear Brandie debate & debunk life’s
organizing myths on her weekly
internet radio show & podcast “The O-Myth”

Part of Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter Series

My Name is Brandie, and I’m the “The Home Office Organizer”. In addition to being professional organizer, I am also an author, speaker, blogger and small business owner. My specialty is empowering busy professionals with information, technology, tools and simple organizing solutions.

I had heard of Evernote a while ago. Then recently, a friend said she was using it and couldn’t live without it, so I thought it was time to give it a try. Boy, am I so glad I did! Evernote is such an open concept, that, at first, I had trouble figuring out where to start. Let me tell you how I have been using it, and share some tips on getting started. Hopefully, this will help you see some of the possibilities.

3 Ways to Get Started Organizing with Evernote

1. Just jump in

At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to use Evernote. Since I learn best by doing, I decided to jump right in. I started with capturing websites, because there seem to be more of those than there are grains of sand. There was a lot of useful information that I wanted to refer back to, but I didn’t know where to put it. So, I captured the link (or a clip of the page), tagged it and filed it away.

2. Use notebooks

I set up one personal notebook for quotes (I post these weekly on my blog) and then had separate notebooks for ongoing projects.

As an example of an ongoing project, I co-host a podcast but I am also working on a second podcast to integrate into my blog. I have a gazillion good ideas, and I was having trouble capturing them. Now, I have an Evernote notebook titled “Podcast XYZ” and “Podcast ABC”. This way, I can take notes, and file them in the appropriate notebook, and everything I need for each project is always accessible.

3. Use tags

What if you come across a bit of information and you aren’t sure what notebook to put it in, because you might forget, and then….Relax. Just use tags. Let’s say I find a podcast show that I like, and would like to learn more about their format for my own education. However, the podcast doesn’t cleanly fit into a single existing bucket? It could easily go in either my “Podcast ABC” or “Personal” notebooks. So, instead of fretting, I put it in Personal and tag it with “podcast”. This way, I can find it later, and it’s neatly put away.

Finding What I Need: The Five Minute Rule

Evernote helps me stay organized. What does that mean? When I speak, I tell my audiences and clients that “organized” means you can find most anything in about 5 minutes. Evernote definitely helps you follow the five minute rule.

Evernote has been great in corralling all those little notes, pictures, snapshots, websites and other tasty bits of information. It’s working wonders so far. I have Evernote installed on my desktop and on my iPhone, and I sync between the two. It couldn’t be easier or more portable! I honestly don’t know what I would do without it.

Evernote’s Summer to Unclutter

Check out our previous post in this series:

• How to Unclutter with Evernote and Rubbermaid in 4 Steps
• 5 Ways to Organize Your Busy Family Life — Guest post by Erin Doland
• 5 Ways Evernote Maximizes Your Organizing Potential — Guest post by Lorie Marrero
• Using Evernote to Solve Everyday Organizational Challenges — Guest post by Deb Lee

Where do you use Evernote?

• Evernote for Windows on my laptop
• Evernote for Windows Mobile on a Motorola Q9c

Which features have you found most useful?

The tagging feature works great for me. Everything related to a client gets tagged with their name, which makes searching very simple and effective. I have found that the tagging works so well for me that I don’t need multiple notebooks to stay organized. I can just use one general notebook for all my work notes (except for business cards). The sync feature is also incredibly useful. I like knowing that anything I put in Evernote is automatically synced, backed up, and available on all of my devices.

Your Evernote story

Evernote is excellent for keeping all of the important information related to my law firm and clients in one place. I started my own law practice a year ago and found Evernote shortly thereafter. I’ve always been big on organization but never really found a system that worked for me. Before Evernote, I had a notepad here and a document there but I lacked an actual system. Evernote makes managing a lot of information for a bunch of different clients possible. An example of how I use Evernote: If a client calls I immediately start a new text note in the desktop version and tag it with the client’s name. This way I have a record of what is going on with each client call that I can easily pull up with a quick search.

I also set up an auto forward from my website’s contact form, which automatically sends a separate copy of the completed form into my Evernote account using my Evernote email address. That way the contact info and data is right there fully searchable and backed up in Evernote.

What was your last note in Evernote?

It was a text note from a client call that I just had.