It’s unlikely that sugarcoating will make our system more efficient.

I used to keep notes for each session with my clients or meeting with partners, and other notes for each team member, and even some for other purposes. Since they were all connected, the system worked pretty well.

This was mostly done for two reasons:

• To have that information automatically dated, as each note has a creation date.
• To be able to reuse the information in other notes. For example, a team member note would be dragged to and linked to a meeting note.

Furthermore, the number of different types of notes would automatically provide statistics based on the backlinks. For instance, I could know how many meetings a client had or how often a team member attended meetings. However, if you ask me how many times I have used this information so far, the answer will be an overwhelming zero.

As you already know, I have been simplifying things on my Evernote. Recently, I decided to try to organize all the above information in single notes with the the help of new Evernote features like headings, links to headings, calendar entries, etc. No statistics, of course. But that’s okay. Although they were always quite cool to look at, I didn’t use them at all.

Anyway, I’m still not quite there yet, but I’ll keep working on it. And, as usual, I will share the results on my channel as soon as I’m satisfied with the new system.

Perhaps we avoid it because it is challenging to simplify things. That’s the reason I keep reminding myself that there are always things that can be removed, especially unnecessary processes.

It’s rare that sugarcoating, categorizing, and a myriad of other routines will result in efficiency.