Put next actions first
and you will find them easier using snippet view. Simple Evernote GTD Projects with Next Action Preview
This quick change makes it easy to keep your project list ordered by due date, sortable by area of responsibility, and ready for scanning next actions:
- Create a notebook called Projects
- Title each project note using this pattern: Year + Month + Day + Verb + Title
- Make sure Evernote is ordering Notes by Title
- Create tags for your areas of responsibility and apply them to your notes
- Put your next actions first in your project notes
- Activate snippet view
Evernote should now look something like this:
Just by going to your Projects notebook you can see:
- Which projects are due
- When the projects were started (day the note was created)
- What areas the projects fall under
- Which actions are next
Leave a comment or send one to me on Twitter.
I wanted to follow-up my Twitter comments and say again what a great site you have here! Here’s a couple questions that come to mind:
1) If you have 1 note per project, what do you do with all of the supporting materials for that project? Do you merge the notes in? Where do you store them if you don’t merge them? IE: I’m going to re-decorate my porch. So for this project, I’ve got pictures I took at Lowe’s of what I want to purchase as separate notes, receipts from the building company, and quotes from contractors. But, the main project page was similar to what you’ve laid out. So, a long way of asking, under your system, how would you do that?
2) My other question for you is what do you do with archived projects? Right now, I have a folder called “zArchived Projects” (the “z” so it goes last). This will allow for my open projects to “breathe” if you will.
Thanks for the pointers and I really appreciate that you share your setup!
Thanks for the questions and the interest, Daniel! Glad you’re enjoying the site.
1) If possible, I keep all the notes for a project in a single note. Saves jumping around.
However if a project is too large to reasonably manage through a single note, I may create several that I link to with Evernote links. I place these links in a master project note. The master project note goes in Projects; the other notes in Reference.
2) I move all archived projects that I intend to keep into my Reference notebook (same idea as “zArchived Projects” but for all archived notes).
Lately I’ve come to realize I rarely view old projects, so I’m now more inclined to delete these project notes once completed.
Side note: at one point, I called this notebook “~Reference” because the “~” would move the notebook to last in the list. Handy alpha character strategy.
Fantastic! Thanks so much for the reply! Keep the great posts coming!
My pleasure.
I’ll be anxious to hear about how some of my ideas work out for you and to hear yours.
Nice use of Evernote. Most interesting for Evernote power use is the Evernote Essentials eBook. Have a look here: http://goo.gl/AUb8b (affiliate link)
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