How to turn Evernote into an Insight Bank

We need tools to manage our thoughts, data, information and knowledge to be able to find insights. A bit of structure and system could benefit you when seeking new ideas – and keeping track of them!

Having a Brain Bank is very useful. I have one on my Evernote. But ideas are a dime a dozen. What you need is an ‘Insight Bank’.

What’s an Insight Bank?

For practical purposes, I’ll tell you how I use Evernote to store insights.

From Brain Bank to Insight Bank

For me, an insight bank is where you keep observations about customer/client attitude changes, noticeable problems and/or problems that are not there yet but you see coming. This helps you organize your thoughts and connect the dots. (P.S. A better tool would be a combination of Evernote + MindManager. If you want to partner to build one, let me know!).

I use Evernote as both an Idea and Insight Bank. Here’s my breakdown of the folders I have:

Brain Bank. This is where I store ideas of whatever pops into my mind.
Clip Screens. Here I store screenshots of things I notice on the web as well as pictures I take with my camera.
DailyNotes. Here I store text snippets from articles, blog posts, etd. Or notes I take about things I notice.
ToWatchOutFor. Here I store notes of things I think are emerging but are not necessarily clear that need my constant attention.

Every weekend I go over these folders one by one. I then synthesize all those notes and write them on my “WeeklyNotes” folder. This folder has less files.

This system is in Beta. It is a work in progress and I tweak it constantly. The system is not limited to Evernote though. The benefits of using Evernote are amazing. But it should not end there. I still think we need better tools.

For example, I’ve recently started using Storify to experiment with text snippets collection. I think it could become a great ‘dot connection’ tool if it were easier to use.

Do you have an Insight Bank? What tool(s) do you use? Evernote power user? Please share your thoughts.