Here is an excellent article on a way to organize Evernote for creative work:
https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/12/1...workflows/
The main takeaway is to avoid the use of lots of tags (it's very easy to search), and focus on quality notes. Author says that obviously notes will have different levels of quality (eg. you save a receipt into Evernote that you might only ever access once again in your life VS a note you review and modify once a week).
The suggestion is to build layers into notes: let's say you read a book on Kindle and highlight all the interesting sections. Then you use something like clippings.io to transfer your highlights into an Evernote note. Then you go through it and bold the most relevant highlights. Then later you go through it again and use Evernote's yellow highlighter to mark "the best" of the bolded sections. Now you have 3 layers, the last of which will be quickest to scan in the future, to decide if you need to dig deeper into the note. A fourth layer could be if you add some personal notations or links of your own.
It's a long article, containing lots of reasoning and explanation, so I'll just copy the most actionable section here...
***
What we’re talking about here is putting a lot more thought into the design of each individual note. It is about making individual notes the most prominent actors, like discrete atoms that can be assembled into any form.
Design is always about balancing priorities — in this case: comprehensiveness and compression.
Compression values condensing big ideas into small packages. We gain tremendous value in condensing the Bible (and even whole religions) into the rule of thumb “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Consuming highly compressed ideas is inherently rewarding, because we can feel that each word is rich with substance. It also helps us conserve our precious attention by eliminating the “fluff”.
Comprehensiveness values knowing all the facts. It is the voice in your head that says “Prove it.” It wants more data, and examples, and cited sources. It is the fear that you’ll remember the main point, but forget why it matters. It helps us not let anything fall through the cracks, but also drives us toward packrat insanity.
The way to balance these competing priorities is to:
Progressively summarize the most important points of a source in small stages (compression), and…
Preserve each of these stages in layers that can be peeled back on demand (comprehensiveness).
Basically, you need to be able to quickly assimilate the main points of a source to evaluate its relevance to the task at hand, while simultaneously preserving the ability to quickly “go deeper” into the source if you judge it to be highly relevant.
But even this “going deeper” must be staged, because you want to avoid creating a black-or-white, all-or-nothing choice between reading just a few key points, or having to go back and re-read the entire original source.
This is the problem with popular articles summarizing the “actionable tips” from influential books. Without the ability to selectively explore the context of a given piece of advice, it means nothing.
Most notes will fall somewhere on a spectrum of relevance, and you want to be able to calibrate the corresponding time you spend “loading” them.
This layering turns a note from a dense, impenetrable jungle into a rocky landscape.
Sometimes you want to do a high-elevation flyover, seeing only the tallest peaks. Other times you want to explore the middle ranges by helicopter, perhaps identifying stories or juicy factoids to illustrate a point. And sometimes, you want to parachute in and hack your way through the underbrush, poring over each source and following every rabbit trail.
Designing your note in easily uncoverable layers is like giving yourself a digital map of the terrain that can be zoomed in or out to any level of detail you need. You’re creating an environment in which your “radar” — your semi-conscious, rapid scanning ability to recognize complex patterns and non-obvious connections intuitively — works to maximum effect.
Ther are a few key qualities that make this system both useful and feasible:
1. Non-universal
This system is very purposefully not universal. The last thing you want to do is put every single note through multiple layers of compression. That is a terrible waste of attention.
Instead, customize the level of compression based on how intuitively resonant the source is with your work. I would guess my personal breakdown, with about 2,300 notes, is approximately:
layer of compression (saving any notes on the source): 50%
layers (bolding the best parts): 25%
layers (highlighting the very best parts): 20%
layers or more (restating the ideas in my own words, applying them to my own context, creating summary outlines, etc.): 5% or less
In general, avoid the temptation to apply the same system everywhere. Not everything needs to scale.
2. Pattern-matching
Our brains far outperform any supercomputer in finding and identifying patterns. You could say our minds are optimized for pattern recognition, which is why we do it quickly and effortlessly.
The note-taking system we create should enable this type of thinking by exposing semantic triggers, not fight against it by burying the most important points in a massive wall o’ text.
[author inserts an image of text from a webpage, with a bolded and yellow highlighted section, and a url to the original article at the bottom]
See how that one phrase jumps out at you, even at this zoomed out elevation?
It will likewise jump out at me if, 6 months from now, I come across this note and need to judge whether it’s worth reading in 5 seconds or less. If the keywords in this highlighted phrase match the pattern of the problem I’m working on, I will start by reading the paragraph in which it’s found. If it still matches, I’ll read the rest of the note. If this ends up being a critical piece of the puzzle I’m solving, I’ll click the link and revisit the whole piece. The attention I’m willing to spend has to be justified upfront.
***
https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/12/1...workflows/
The main takeaway is to avoid the use of lots of tags (it's very easy to search), and focus on quality notes. Author says that obviously notes will have different levels of quality (eg. you save a receipt into Evernote that you might only ever access once again in your life VS a note you review and modify once a week).
The suggestion is to build layers into notes: let's say you read a book on Kindle and highlight all the interesting sections. Then you use something like clippings.io to transfer your highlights into an Evernote note. Then you go through it and bold the most relevant highlights. Then later you go through it again and use Evernote's yellow highlighter to mark "the best" of the bolded sections. Now you have 3 layers, the last of which will be quickest to scan in the future, to decide if you need to dig deeper into the note. A fourth layer could be if you add some personal notations or links of your own.
It's a long article, containing lots of reasoning and explanation, so I'll just copy the most actionable section here...
***
What we’re talking about here is putting a lot more thought into the design of each individual note. It is about making individual notes the most prominent actors, like discrete atoms that can be assembled into any form.
Design is always about balancing priorities — in this case: comprehensiveness and compression.
Compression values condensing big ideas into small packages. We gain tremendous value in condensing the Bible (and even whole religions) into the rule of thumb “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Consuming highly compressed ideas is inherently rewarding, because we can feel that each word is rich with substance. It also helps us conserve our precious attention by eliminating the “fluff”.
Comprehensiveness values knowing all the facts. It is the voice in your head that says “Prove it.” It wants more data, and examples, and cited sources. It is the fear that you’ll remember the main point, but forget why it matters. It helps us not let anything fall through the cracks, but also drives us toward packrat insanity.
The way to balance these competing priorities is to:
Progressively summarize the most important points of a source in small stages (compression), and…
Preserve each of these stages in layers that can be peeled back on demand (comprehensiveness).
Basically, you need to be able to quickly assimilate the main points of a source to evaluate its relevance to the task at hand, while simultaneously preserving the ability to quickly “go deeper” into the source if you judge it to be highly relevant.
But even this “going deeper” must be staged, because you want to avoid creating a black-or-white, all-or-nothing choice between reading just a few key points, or having to go back and re-read the entire original source.
This is the problem with popular articles summarizing the “actionable tips” from influential books. Without the ability to selectively explore the context of a given piece of advice, it means nothing.
Most notes will fall somewhere on a spectrum of relevance, and you want to be able to calibrate the corresponding time you spend “loading” them.
This layering turns a note from a dense, impenetrable jungle into a rocky landscape.
Sometimes you want to do a high-elevation flyover, seeing only the tallest peaks. Other times you want to explore the middle ranges by helicopter, perhaps identifying stories or juicy factoids to illustrate a point. And sometimes, you want to parachute in and hack your way through the underbrush, poring over each source and following every rabbit trail.
Designing your note in easily uncoverable layers is like giving yourself a digital map of the terrain that can be zoomed in or out to any level of detail you need. You’re creating an environment in which your “radar” — your semi-conscious, rapid scanning ability to recognize complex patterns and non-obvious connections intuitively — works to maximum effect.
Ther are a few key qualities that make this system both useful and feasible:
1. Non-universal
This system is very purposefully not universal. The last thing you want to do is put every single note through multiple layers of compression. That is a terrible waste of attention.
Instead, customize the level of compression based on how intuitively resonant the source is with your work. I would guess my personal breakdown, with about 2,300 notes, is approximately:
layer of compression (saving any notes on the source): 50%
layers (bolding the best parts): 25%
layers (highlighting the very best parts): 20%
layers or more (restating the ideas in my own words, applying them to my own context, creating summary outlines, etc.): 5% or less
In general, avoid the temptation to apply the same system everywhere. Not everything needs to scale.
2. Pattern-matching
Our brains far outperform any supercomputer in finding and identifying patterns. You could say our minds are optimized for pattern recognition, which is why we do it quickly and effortlessly.
The note-taking system we create should enable this type of thinking by exposing semantic triggers, not fight against it by burying the most important points in a massive wall o’ text.
[author inserts an image of text from a webpage, with a bolded and yellow highlighted section, and a url to the original article at the bottom]
See how that one phrase jumps out at you, even at this zoomed out elevation?
It will likewise jump out at me if, 6 months from now, I come across this note and need to judge whether it’s worth reading in 5 seconds or less. If the keywords in this highlighted phrase match the pattern of the problem I’m working on, I will start by reading the paragraph in which it’s found. If it still matches, I’ll read the rest of the note. If this ends up being a critical piece of the puzzle I’m solving, I’ll click the link and revisit the whole piece. The attention I’m willing to spend has to be justified upfront.
***