» HOWTO: Get Things Done with Evernote

As requested:

  1. create an Evernote account
  2. create 3 notebooks1:
    • “Next Actions” or “To Do”
    • “Maybe” or “Someday”
    • “Projects” or “Dependents”
  3. make Next Actions your default notebook
  4. delete the example notebook
  5. create two tags:
    • Contexts
    • Projects
  6. create a bunch of context tags in the form “@place”; drag each under the Contexts tag
  7. as-needed, create project tags in the form “.name”2; drag each under the Projects tag

You have a few inboxes in your life: email, voicemail, face-to-face discussions, your imagination, etc. When a task idea comes up, figure out what the action is:

  • If you can do it and want to do it, put it in Next Actions.
  • If you’re not sure whether you want to do it, put it in Maybe.
  • If you need to do something first, put the original action in Projects, create the prerequisit action in Next Actions, create a Project tag and tag both actions with it.

Throughout the day, check your Next Actions list filtered by context. (Evernote allows you to create tag union and intersection saved searches by Control-clicking tags.) Review your Maybe and Projects lists weekly or as often as you feel necessary and move actions to Next Actions as appropriate. My Maybe and Projects lists are very small but I think it’s important to have somewhere to park things.

There are three other notebooks that you might want to create after you’ve tried this system:

Inbox
if you’re using Evernote’s clipping or message-receiving features, you won’t want to dump everything directly into Next Actions
Waiting
when you delegate tasks, GTD advises putting them on a list for regular review; I don’t do much delegation, but I suspect it’s better to create follow-up triggers in your calendar
Recurring
you’ll have some tasks that aren’t strictly time-dependent but must be done every once in a while, I find it useful to store these in a notebook

1 You could have a single notebook and use tags for status, but since any given action is only going to have one status, I don’t see the advantage of this.
2 Other naming conventions have been proposed.

36 Replies

36 thoughts on “HOWTO: Get Things Done with Evernote”

  1. Daniel

    I do something very similar to this. I have found it handy to also keep a ‘Reference’ notebook for putting reference material in, also tagged with context and/or project tags. Passwords, links, etc.

    Reply ↓
  5. Kevin Neely

    Really nice description. Heck, your blog even uses the Evernote green!

    For the recurring items, you could use tags like “daily”, “weekly”, “quarterly”, etc. and set some sort of calendar trigger like “Do Quarterly tasks today!”

    Reply ↓
  6. Pete

    I understand that Next Actions go in that folder and stuff you may get to someday goes in the Someday folder, but what goes in the Projects folder if you have a Projects tag?

    Reply ↓
  7. shrop

    Very cool. Been looking for something like this. I use OmniFocus. I am wondering how you might use this with another app. What kinds of things are you putting in evernote for GTD? Is evernote your only GTD app? Just wonder how you use this in conjunction if you do..thanks!
    Shrop

    Reply ↓
  9. Jared Post author

    @portlairge: The idea is to preface project tags with a dot to distinguish them from context tags. (So “@home” is stuff to do at home, “.home” is actions to get a home. ;)

    My personal GTD system only has: .decorate room, .office plants, .passport and .books. But as I said, I don’t use projects much personally.

    Reply ↓
  10. Jared Post author

    @Kevin Neely: if it truly recurs with a fixed frequency, I’d just create a recurring event in my calendar. My Recurring folder has things like clean bathroom, restock wine and bill roommates. It might be worth tagging those weekly, biweekly and monthly because that’s approximately when they happen. But mostly I just keep recurring tasks around because dragging a task into my Next Action list is faster than creating it from scratch.

    Reply ↓
  11. Jared Post author

    @Pete: Projects holds all actions that depend on a Next Action happening first. Evernote doesn’t permit nested tasks, so I use project tags to link them together.

    Reply ↓
  13. Sam Hasler

    The latest versions of evernote (version 3) don’t allow you to create tag union searches, only intersection. I think it was available in version 2, and it’s possible they’ll be adding it back in future.

    Reply ↓

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  15. Mike

    6. create a bunch of context tags in the form “@place”; drag each under the Contexts tag
    7. as-needed, create project tags in the form “.name”2; drag each under the Projects tag

    I get creating the tags. I’m not sure what is meant by “drag each under the * tag”

    Explain, please?

    Reply ↓
  16. Kevin Neely

    You can drag a tag under an existing tag to created nested tags (I actually didn’t know this until reading this article).

    Evernote is great specifically because of the vast untapped functionality. It works well right at the start, but gets better the more you play with it.

    Reply ↓
  18. Jude

    Another tip that is helpful to determine priority is to include the due date in the title. So for example, “2009/06/05 – Submit expense reports” works well and allows me to sort by due date. ;

    Reply ↓

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  24. Darren Crawford

    I do something similar which I blogged about here: [Editor: Link was missing. :( ]

    Basically, I use 3 notebooks. Default of INBOX for all incoming, then I tag with the appropriate context and move to NEXT ACTIONS and/or REFERENCE.

    Reply ↓

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  29. Christoph Dollis

    Thanks, Jared. Great idea and utterly simple explanation.

    Christoph

    P.S. I haven’t checked the new Walmart. Thanks for your review. I’ll stick to the excellent Fairways on Quadra for the bulk of my shopping — their produce is great.

    Reply ↓

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