Consistently Average > Occasionally Great?

I’ve always admired people who can keep themselves organized in a notebook. It always feels so professional. It has never worked for me. Electronic has always worked better, even when I was using a Microsoft Works spreadsheet to organize my finances in college. When I had my first Blackberry, I would send notes to myself about things I needed to do. It was a great use of passive time on the Metro. No matter where I was I could get to that email. It was imperfect, but I was consistent and it worked.

For a long time I took notes in a simple text file on my computer. I would rename the file every day and keep that as my list of to do items. It was ugly, but it was searchable, and easy to open. For a while I wanted to recapture the ability to get those notes from anywhere. I tried a service to sync text files through Dropbox. Conflicts abounded. Changes were lost. I was frustrated. I was improving my system but I became less consistent.

Somewhere around this time I opened Evernote because of all the hype. In a strange twist, I just couldn’t think of what I would do with it. I remember saving one note while visiting my sister in the hospital. It had a picture of my brother-in-law and a random note. It reminded me of my first time on the web in 1993. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Luckily, I returned to Evernote six months later and fell in love. I still have conflicts occasionally that cause irritation. But mostly, I have notes about EVERYTHING! I record notes from sales and prospecting calls which then are easily linked to my Insightly CRM account. I keep shopping lists. I keep lists of movies to watch. I journal in Evernote. And of course everything is tagged and searchable. 

I've flirted with a variety of note-taking and list-making apps. I've liked so many of them but have never gotten myself to use them consistently. Are they better than Evernote at what they do? Absolutely. But if I can't bring myself to use them consistently, they are not for me.

Is Evernote perfect? No. Does it do everything I want? No. But it is a great reminder to me that using a tool consistently is better than having the perfect tool. I will probably migrate when I fall in love with another tool and use it consistently. Until that time, it’s Evernote, warts and all.