Tag Archives: evernote

Moleskine + Evernote: Idea capture heaven

Image representing Evernote as depicted in Cru...

 

Do you know ? I don’t know about you but I’ve never gotten good ideas in the middle of a brainstorm, I’ve gotten them after the brainstorm when I’m not even thinking  about problems.

 

I’m a big believer in understanding how one thinks to improve how one thinks so I’ve been playing around with a habit I have. When I get a gut feeling about something I either write it down on my Moleskine when I’m away from the PC, create a note on Evernote if I’m using my computer or snap/type it into the Evernote app on my Palm Pre.

 

If you capture ideas I bet you have a similar habit, I’ve been writing down my thoughts for a long time but for the last month I payed attention to my own idea capture behavior to figure out which one I use the most and therefore which works for me. The pattern I noticed was that I do a lot more capturing on my Moleskine and phone app than when I’m sitting in front of my computer. Why is this?

 

Because good ideas comes to mind once we are in a relax mood and not in a sick hurry. When I write on the Moleskine I do so when not engaged in focused thinking, thoughts come out of pure observations. I use the Evernote app on my phone to snap photos of things so I can come back to them later and the Evernote app on my desktop works as a brain bank of clips of my daily browsing.

 

On the weekends I retype the notes on the Moleskine into Evernote which I shouldn’t have to do but I’ve found that it may spur some insight when I’m retyping them into Evernote because those notes have been simmering in there and gives me an opportunity to revisit them. It’s a long process I know (if you have other ideas let me know!) but it’s an experiment I’ve been doing and thoroughly enjoy, I just can’t seem to let the notebook go!

 

and capturing ideas is one technique that people could start applying today to bring more creativity into their work or their business organization.

 

How do you capture ideas? Which one works for you?

 

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A lesson in co-creation

Felt like writing this post because I think it’s pretty awesome.

 

I use Evernote religiously so I was ecstatic to hear that on the EN blog today. Why do this? To improve the product of course. Evernote has some pretty passionate fans (including me!) who care deeply about the product because it’s useful and it’s become part of their daily habits.

It really is like your second brain so who better than the loyal fans to know what might make it a lot better? 

 

 

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phil is done

 

When was the last time you heard a CEO answer people’s questions (all of them!) on a blog and even offer to chat by phone? Not everyday…You see forums, send us an email, a Twitter account, support phone but not the CEO on a ‘let’s improve the product Q&A’ ideation blog post.

 

Takeaway: If you’re a CEO and you’re interested in knowing what your customers think of your product, show it!

Weekend innovation tip: Use the Phoenix checklist to develop an original solution

Keeping a checklist of questions close to you (Moleskine notebook, Evernote) comes in very handy when you need some creative firepower. When presented with a challenge, knowing what to ask is the difference between doing more of the same and doing something extraordinary. was developed by the CIA to encourage agents to look at a challenge from different angles.

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Using Phoenix is like holding your challenge in your hand. You can turn it, look at it from the sides, from underneath, from above, giving you all the angles to arrive at an original solution.

 

Use the Phoenix to !

The world needs more awesomeness

A few weeks ago Umair Haque said . In an effort to do that he’s :

The goal is to produce a stronger, collaboratively written manifesto on awesomeness, rich with real-world example, discussion, and commentary.

 

Here then are my thoughts:

 

Awesome for me is something that let’s me do or experience something that I’ve never done before. This can also be called innovation, but then again we always had phones until the iPhone came along.

Bottom line ’Awesome is a dramatic improvement over what was before.’

 

Products and services that make my life more awesome are:

  • An iPod let’s me carry thousands of songs in my pocket.
  • An Alienware Computer let’s me play games at the highest performance.
  • A PS3 let’s me play the best console video games at a high performance
  • A Kindle let’s me have books to read at any time I want.
  • A Moleskine notebook let’s me write down notes in a very simple way.
  • makes me smarter and more productive because it let’s me remember more things anywhere I am.
  • let’s keep up with news in a very intuitive and simple way.
  • Mind Manager let’s me create mind maps in a simple and efficient way where I feel confident I can come up with better ideas. 
  • In-n-Out let’s me eat an old fashioned burger the way it should be.
  • let’s me buy pretty much anything I want through the internet and get it 3 days later in a perfect state.
  • let’s me browse the internet wickedly fast (but I still prefer ).
  • let’s me share anything to anywhere in the web directly from my browser.
  • Jordan basketball shoes let me play basketball without having to worry about performance and safety.
  • Nike sports wear gives me the psychological edge in sports.
  • Logitech let’s me have beautiful, efficiently modern tech devices to use with my computer.
  • A Heineken makes me feel like I belong to special group of beer drinkers.
  • A Zebra F-701 pen is a good looking pen with great feel and it’s cheap.

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In conclusion:

 

Awesome enables me.

Awesome empowers me.

Awesome activates me.

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What are your thoughts on awesome? What products or services do you consider awesome?

How to use Evernote to keep your mind sharp

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There are enough reviews of out there so I will not do one here. What I will do is share with you how I use it to manage information and gain insights. There other notebooks in my Evernote but I will only focus on the 4 I use to help me focus my brain.

What I like about Evernote is it’s simplicity.

It has everything in the right place, it’s intuitive just like sitting in the drivers seat. You know where the steering wheel, accelerator, brakes and speedometer are located.

The web clipper is by far the most used feature of Evernote and is conveniently placed on the Firefox toolbar. Just like everyone else I use it to copy full websites, text, videos and pictures. This is what happens next:

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Every new note goes to the ToRead notebook where I will then go and read and filter to the other notebooks.

If I’m reading a PDF and I find information that I want to read later on, I’ll use the clipper to select and copy it to Evernote. This takes advantage of Evernote’s text-in-picture reading capabilities later on if you’re searching your notebooks.

I’ll normally forward to-do stuff from my email to the ToDo notebook, this also helps me think about different ways I can do that activity instead of just treating it as another habit.

Back to School buy The ToUse notebook Teeth buy

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is my tactical arsenal. These are a collection of case studies, examples, how-to’s of tactics that I can put to use right away. I can recall examples of usage and think of different combinations on how to put it to use…it helps me formulate strategies really fast.

The Brain Bank notebook is where I develop insights from. I put articles, reports, pdf’s, blog posts, etc that I need to think and reflect on. This is where patterns may emerge that may lead to something (signals) and then use them for some future think (foresight).

That’s it! This is how I use Evernote. It’s still a work in progress but I’m having a lot of fun.

While I use Evernote as a strategic analysis/innovation tool, I’m sure everyone has their own reasons for using Evernote. How do you use Evernote? I’d love to hear any tips!

The Pagemaster buy I’m glad to see some of . I’m still waiting for the Blackberry app to come out, I can’t wait!

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