[TOOL] Evernote Vs. iOS Notes

I just caught myself looking at a comparison review of Evernote and the iOS Notes app.

I pay $8/month for Evernote and I have been for years.

But I’ve noticed that I haven’t really used Evernote over the past few months. I had exclusively been using iOS Notes.

That money is being wasted!

But why?

Evernote has always been better.

• Evernote could record your voice and save it as a note.
• Evernote could scan your whiteboard notes and make THOSE searchable.
• Evernote could upload everywhere and do everything.

Over the past few years, they built more apps, more extensions, and more features.

Scannable. Skitch. Web Clipper. And many others.

It became a brain.

And then . . . I realized I didn’t actually want a brain.

I wanted a note taker.

The number one feature that mattered to me was how quickly I could get my notes app launched so I could capture my thought.

That was it.

None of those other sexy features actually mattered!

iOS Notes has fewer features, looks less sexy, and doesn't scan anything.

But it does what I need it to do.

What a lesson about productivity and business!

It’s so easy to get distracted by features and extensions and compatibilities.

It’s harder to focus on the minimum viable feature.

The one thing that actually solves the problem.

Time to unsubscribe to Evernote.iOS Notes wins!

2 Minute Action

If you could only get one thing done today, what would it be?

What other things will definitely happen and impede this from getting finished?

Is this one thing dependent on anything else (like someone else’s work) to get done?

How can you get around it?

Just thinking like this for 2 minutes will make all the difference in actually checking things off.

Focus like this makes you immune to distraction.

And if you fall into the vortex of sexy app features (like I just did), it’s this learned habit of thinking that will get you out.

How To Get It Done When It Feels Like "Someday, Maybe"

David Allen's "Getting Things Done" method calls this the "Someday Maybe" list.The Agile framework refers to this as the "Icebox."It doesn't really matter what you call it, as long as you've gone one.It's a list that has all of those projects you know you need to do at some point but either aren't fully hashed out enough to be important or aren't urgent enough to make it to the to-do list.The tricky part, though, actually isn't writing the list. The tricky part is only having one list and remembering to revisit it every 6 months or every quarter, or in whatever interval you find functional.

2 Minute Action:

Create an Icebox in iOS reminders, Trello, Google Keep, Evernote, or whatever task management tool you use.This is it. This is your list. You're not allowed to have duplicate lists (not even one digital and one physical).Only one.Now set a reminder on your phone, or in Slack, or wherever you set reminders, to run through this list once a quarter.The future is much more likely to happen, now.And that's what it's all about, right? Putting the odds in your favor?