One of the most frustrating things for readers and writers is forgetting where a quote came from. I hate it when I remember a great quote, but can’t remember which book it is from. After flipping through a few books and searching for it online, I often give up.
Enter Evernote. I first read about this tool in The 4-Hour Workweek but have been putting off really testing it out for awhile. Now I can’t believe that I have gone so long without it. In short, Evernote is a online note taking and storage program that uses text recognition and tagging. That may not mean much at first glance, but it changes everything for me.
Now when I finish a book, I flip back through and take a picture of any page that I have highlighted a quote on with my Evernote program on my iPhone. After snapping all of the pictures, you can tag them with the name of the book, project, and any other information you need to help keep it organized. This is is the best part . . . your notes are then uploaded to Evernote online and the text you just took a picture of is now searchable!
If you want to find every quote you have highlighted in any book that contains the word \”reformation\” it takes about 5 seconds. Or if you need to search all the notes from a project you worked on a couple of years ago, its a piece of cake. Best of all, its free up to a certain data limit. You can take it for a test run and see if it is right for you.
I have only scratched the surface of the things you can do with Evernote, and will post more about other things you can use if for in the future. What are some uses that you can think of? Will this change how you research your next book? Are there any other programs out there that you think are better?
