You Win, Evernote
Posted on David Pierce | 7 Comments
My whole life (almost literally) is stored in a note-taking system, and for a while it was Evernote. But then, I wrote a few months ago about how I was done with Evernote. Done I say, done! I was switching to Simplenote, for a whole variety of reasons.
Well, I lied. I’d love to say I’m sticking with Simplenote, but I’m not. I’m back into Evernote – I have been for a while now, actually, I’ve just been too ashamed to tell you all.
When I switched, my impetus really boiled down to three things: Simplenote was simpler and faster, had better list support, and let me pin notes to the top of the list for easy access. That’s all still true, at least the latter two, but it turns out those features weren’t as important as some others.
The reason I’m back using Evernote isn’t that Simplenote isn’t great. It is. It’s just not nearly powerful enough for what I need, as it turns out. I could go on at length, but I’ll spare you – it’s really just three things that I couldn’t live without:
- Web Clipping – I really, really need to be able to clip web pages, whether it’s entire pages or just snippets, and Simplenote offers no functional way to do that. Evernote, on the other hand, does it wonderfully.
- Email Notes – Whenever I’m away from my own computer (especially when I’m on my iPad), I’m constantly emailing stuff to Evernote. Articles to read, things I need to remember, photos – Simplenote allows this, but it’s not nearly as robust as Evernote.
- Rich text – I do a lot of writing in my note-taking app, whatever it is. It’s where a lot of drafts live, as well as a lot of finished products that don’t have a place to go yet. As I write, I like to have bold or italicized words, or make lists, or change the text justification and color for no reason whatsoever. I didn’t like not being able to do that with Simplenote, and I really didn’t like how many times I forgot and email a rich document to Simplenote, and proceeded to lose all formatting.
I’m also writing this post because, to Evernote’s credit, they’ve actually fixed a lot of things I didn’t like before. (I’m taking full credit for them all being solved, so you’re welcome.) Now, if you don’t give a note a title in the mobile app, it takes the first line as the title. There’s a Favorites bar in the Mac app (the one I use most) that mimics the pinning functionality of Simplenote. All of the Evernote apps are faster, better looking, and simpler to use than ever, and more and more apps are integrating Evernote in clever ways.
My New Setup
Part of the problem I had previously with Evernote was that it was just too complex. As it turns out, that was mostly my fault. I had tons of notebooks, tons of tags, more saved searches than you could shake a stick at, and generally no idea where anything was.
This time, I’m doing it better, and it’s working. I only have two notebooks now: “Inbox,” and “Everything.” Everything starts in the Inbox, and after getting looked at once either gets deleted or goes into Everything. All my real organization is done by tags, and I don’t even have very many of those (four right now). I’m diligent about deleting notes I don’t have need for anymore, which helps an enormous amount. Mostly, I just dump everything into the Everything bucket and rely on search to find everything, and that’s working nicely.
I’m a renewed Evernote fan, and I promise not to break up with it again. For like a month, at the very least.
David Pierce, the founder of Digitizd, is now Reviews Editor at The Verge.
You have just described exactly how I use Evernote.
As one of my colleagues told me when I saw he had only four labels in gmail, “if I can’t find something that I need, then I just need to craft a better search”.
Exactly! It’s such a good mantra, and saves so much organizational time – the files and folders metaphor always kinda sucked, we just never knew it until search came along. It’s helped a LOT in making Evernote work for me again.
Ever try OneNote?
Yeah, and I liked it, but its mobile support wasn’t nearly what I needed it to be. Do you use it?
Yes. I started using it back in college when it first came out (03), way before Evernote and Simplenote even existed. There is so much functionality there that once you figure out how to use everything, there is really no other viable alternative.
But there are two major flaws IMO:
- Mobile Support – As you pointed out, this is probably the biggest flaw with OneNote. Luckily for me, it comes built-in with WP7 and there is an iOS app, so it hasn’t been a big issue. But this is something that still needs to be improved
- Ease of Use/User Experience – Like most other Microsoft software, the UI/UX leaves a lot to be desired. I think features-wise, OneNote is better than Evernote and Simplenote but if you were to ask a first-time user, I am not sure they would see the same.
I think if they were to fix these two issues and actually advertise the damn thing, I think they would see a lot more users using OneNote.
I agree. OneNote is the best. However, I’ve lost years of notes several times now as I switched platforms & devices. So, I am sticking with Simplenote. I can save a local version of the notes. And, plain text is one of those formats that will work for years to come.
Late to the convo here, but appreciate the article. I also have about 7 years in OneNote (’03) but am gradually migrating to Evernote. I will miss the ‘pin anywhere’ functionality, but I’m now building a note taking system for my clients to use in their content strategy, so the need for cross-platform eliminates OneNote from the mix.
Thanks for saving me time exploring Simplenote. I too was attracted by the speed factor, but you’ve also described how I use Evernote and I *need* those features.
Now on to check out the rest of your blog. Cheers!