Master Evernote: The Unofficial Guide to Organizing Your Life with Evernote (Plus 75 Ideas for Getting Started)

I started using EVERNOTE about six months ago. Since then it has proven to be a valuvale app that I have been using every day to capture notes on the run, organize files, and of lately, to outline current and future novel projects. BUT, although I was aware of some of the cool functions of the app, until I purchased this book the other day I hadn’t taken the time to really "dive into" what it is really capable of. MASTER EVERNOTE shows you all you need to know, and then some.I’ve read most of S.J. Scott’s stuff and, MASTER EVERNOTE is what you would expect from his books: a concise, well-written and informative book that provides value to the reader while adding a level of high quality to everyday living. MASTER EVERNOTE is another book highly recommended that provides the ins and outs of one of the most powerful apps in the market today.MASTER EVERNOTE works well for several reasons. Whether you are a novice to the “paperless lifestyle” of have been using EVERNOTE for awhile, their is enough info here for everybody. Because I’m a novice and still learning the ropes, I had more gain from it than some of the other more advanced users. Steve Scott takes you through the various functions of the app, from making simple notes to organizing notebooks to creating stacks. If you have various projects on the go [as many people do that requires several steps to complete, EVERNOTE as we learn is just the place to get everything organized. It is basically a central hub for all the “stuff” in your life to gather and get organized. From simple ideas to PDF documents, audio to photos, it can all be amassed into one central location for easy access no matter where you may be on the planet. It doesn’t get any better than that. As a "notebook" addict I have been writing things down for years, and with stacks of notebooks lying around the house, it is easy to "forget" where you wrote down that greta idea you had while on vacation at the beach last summer. By implementing the ideas found in this book and making EVERNOTE a daily habit, I have eliminated the addictive need to keep massive amounts of notes hidden everywhere.INTEGRATING THE GTD SYSTEM [MY FAVORITE PART OF THIS BOOK!]I have been implementing DAVID ALLENS’S GTD [Getting Things Done] system for the last two years and absolutely love his system for organizing everything in your life to reduce stress and boost personal productivity. My favourite part o this book is how it shows us to integrate the two using the EVERNOTE platform. By doing this, you now have a complete “paperless” system to gather, analyze, and take action on anything that comes into your life. This is definitely the highlights of the book.To wrap things up the author gives us 75 ways to use EVERNOTE for many o the daily actions in our lives. By creating habits to take notes, make notebooks, add tags, or using the audio feature you can do everything from novel planning to organizing your next vacation in Fiji. And all without having to usue a single piece of paper, which saves time, space and money.Scott Allan

I've been an Evernote user for 7 years. I thought the content of the book was great. I learned a few things without feeling overwhelmed. I've already done my time of feeling overwhelmed with trying to make Evernote part of my life. A reader new to Evernote will appreciate the hand-holding this book can give.But while the content was good, the presentation was lacking. There were many typos and formatting errors. I didn't highlight all of them, but between 25% and 50% of the way through the book I intentionally highlighted any typo I found. There were 16 that I caught in that portion of the book. I did not mark formatting errors (most of the bulleted lists had at least 1 point with an extra space between the bullet and the text for some odd reason).I'm not a proofreader, but seeing these easily avoidable mistakes always makes me suspicious of the quality of the content presented. I am always hesitant to purchase other books by an author when I see so many typos. I worry about the quality of the research in books where I don't know the content as well.The author does offer a "free" report for the book. After you spend your $3 for his Kindle book he lets you take advantage of a printable reference guide for Evernote. That is a nice offer until you realize you have to give up your email address to get it. I would suspect that anyone can get the reference guide whether they have purchased the book or not just by submitting their email address. No thanks. (Besides, why would I want a printable guide when the value of Evernote is that I don't have to print stuff any more?)4 stars for content, 2 stars for presentation, 1 star for sleezy "thanks for spending money for my book, now give me your email address." I know that doesn't quite average out to 3, but I try not to be too harsh.

This is another Evernote book I find really good for beginners/intermediates. If you've been using EN for less than a year, you'll probably get a lot out of this book.The first two sections are "Basics" which focuses on stuff that any basic Evernote Tutorial will cover, followed by "Advanced" which felt more like intermediate stuff to me. The "Advanced" area is good for people who are wanting to use Evernote on a more regular basis, but feel slightly overwhelmed with all the stuff you already have and/or people wanting to get more out of Evernote. That said, I did learn a few things from the Advanced section I didn't know, specifically that you could import folders and have them watched/imported regularly (a Windows Feature)Next is a Getting Things Done overview and how to incorporate Evernote into it. This isn't a step-by-step "make EN your GTD spot" like Secret Weapon or even David Allen's own book on combining the two, but it has some solid ideas and includes a fantastic pic for how to follow the GTD workflow using Evernote.The last area is 75 Ideas for Getting Started with Evernote. As a long-time EN user, this was actually the place I got the most value from this book. There were several ideas in here I hadn't thought of that really made me go "well that's brilliant, THANK YOU!"Overall, it was worth the $2.99 I paid for the book, but be warned if you are a long time EN user, most of the book will probably be a review for you.

Very good introduction to Evernote for new users and a good way for someone who has used Evernote for a while but maybe not really exploited it to see what is available. The author does rather obsess about tags, that personally I find not very useful, and seems to have supped rather too much of David Allen's GTD Kool Aid, again personally not something I find useful, so maybe needs to take a step back and realise that just because something works well for them it won't necessarily be that good for everyone. That said, if GTD and tagging work well for you then great this is the book for you, if not then there's still lots of useful content.The big downside is that this book is about a year old and is already out of date on some important aspects of Evernote, most noticeably about subscription levels. When this was written there were two, free (Basic) and Premium. There are now three: Basic (free), Plus (similar to the old premium but cheaper) and Premium (same price as the old premium but better). Given how in the book the author raves about how organised they are I'm surprised that they haven't issued a new edition covering the new features, new tools and subscription levels. :-)

A very helpful guide to anyone who wants to use the internet to track, advance and monitor their projects as well as keeping themselves organized. Anyone who has read any of this author's other work will already be familiar with his enthusiasm for this site. It's by no means a commercial for the product as he makes it clear that there are other products that can store notes and pictures.The author recommends getting your files disciplined from the outset setting well chosen tags and files so that it doesn't just become one big jumble. Personally I found it hard going but I am easily defeated by technology and believe most would find the guide both well explained and comprehensive. With pictures of the screens to follow as well, I will persevere.Update. Two years after this review I have repeatedly read how writers like to use Evernote so I shall be looking at this book again.

I had evernote previous to reading this book, became so frustrated with evernote so deleted it. Then saw this book, bought and read it, suddenly evernote made sense, so downloaded evernote again and I actually got evernote to work and created several notebooks success. I am not very good with all the tech stuff. The only reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of5 I did find the middle part of the book confusing with all the different apps and I still carn't get to grips with evernote web clipped but the basic evernote, think I am sorted to make notes and store them. Thanks Steve

I am very impressed with Evernote so far. The basic version is really good and I haven't needed to upgrade it although if it turns out I do need to upgrade it would still seem like good value. It works well on iPad and laptop and synchronises quickly. The notes are very searchable. I can't fault it.This little guide book was superb, even though some of the screen layouts seem to have changed. It helped me find my way through the app very quickly but more importantly is genuinely full of good ideas to get the most from it. I am an Evernote addict now.

Master Evernote is a great introduction to the productivity tool Evernote. It covers all the basic setup information required to get going with Evernote. I only gave it 4 stars however because although it introduces many of the more advanced features that you can take advantage of, it does not really go into any detail in to exactly how to use these features in practice. This is not really a big problem, but true mastery of the service requires you to also look elsewhere for the necessary information.As a solid grounding in the use of Evernote, Master Evernote is a great read.