The Zen of Results and Evernote

  • Article

I tested Evernote with my time management system, The Zen of Results.  Evernote is like ITunes for knowledge.  Check out how easily The Zen of Results fit with Evernote:

EvernoteAndTheZenOfResults

It took me under 5 minutes from start to finish.  It was intuitive and friction free.  One of the keys to effective time management techniques is getting rid of friction, otherwise it's death by a 1000 paper cuts in the long run.  I expected some learning curve or some issues, so I was pleasantly surprised.  Maybe I'll be unpleasantly surprised later, but so far so good.

Results
The quick test was a success:

  • I found it very easy to create folders and lists – just like I do on my hard-drive and in Outlook. 
  • I like the idea that it’s an online/offline system.  It's a S+S (software plus services) application.
  • You can tag stuff too. 
  • It’s nice and crisp.

Notebook Summary
Here's a summary of the notebooks I created in Evernote for The Zen of Results:

  • Vision / Mission / Values - my internal compass.
  • Outcomes - my overall big picture accomplishments.

Action

  • To Dos - my daily outcomes – the value I bite off for the day.
  • Queue - my list for each project and my backlog of pending stuff.
  • Weekly Outcomes - my “Monday Vision” for the week’s planned results.  It sets the weekly forest from the monthly trees.

Reference

  • Notes - any random dumps from links to whatever.
  • Thoughts - my little “ah has” or ideas – it’s a thought catcher.
  • Sessions - my running dumps where I’ll dump my notes from stickies or notes from the day (I keep a notepad file open so I always have a place to dump my brain without wasting think time)

Checklists / Scripts

  • Checklists - my checklists ;)
  • Scripts - my step by step instructions – for anything from a routine to an “improvement script” that I cycle through to improve.

Improvement / Results

  • Results Log - my daily log of stuff I accomplished.  I only use it if I get in stuck mode or feel like I’m thrashing or churning or just don’t feel good about accomplishment.
  • Monthly results - my monthly snapshot of results – a simple bulleted list of things I did.  Perfect for reviews and for sending to management each month.
  • Lessons Learned - my distillations on projects or from other people – it’s whenever I do the exercise.

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