It’s always challenging to decide whether to bring my dog on our quick trips. Caffeine was not with us on Sunday, but I couldn’t help but wonder why I didn’t bring him. Every time we go to Galicia, we find new malls and shops like this. Thank you, guys, for helping us enjoy our furry friends even during the hot summer days 🐾
From Pixels to Plastic: When the Old-School Beats Digital
Google Wallet is perfect for scanning loyalty program barcodes and QR codes. However, one supermarket I sometimes go to struggles to read phone screens. Frustrated, I opted for a low-tech solution. I attached the loyalty card to my eco bag with a zip tie, and all I have to do now is put the bag first on the conveyor belt to grant some rewards.
The best solution is the one that works for you. It’s even better when It’s simple to implement and use.
From Sketch to Reality with my Digital Planning Powerhouse: #Supernote and #Evernote
I’m excited to bring this improvised kitchenette in my office into reality. I created it a while ago as a proof of concept that I’m now ready to bring to the next level using my favorite duo.
The Supernote has been a game-changer for sketching out ideas, and Evernote keeps everything organized for easy access. To learn how I make both work together smoothly, you can check out this video. Back to the project, all the drawings and measurements were automatically sent to my Evernote, where I added the list of materials. The next steps are buying all the items and building.
Can’t wait to share the final result! Any design tips or suggestions?
Apple's Greedy Grab: Will Creators Have to Pay the Price?
Apple’s App Store fees have the potential to make things harder for creators on Patreon.
As a shareholder, I understand that many of Apple’s decisions are driven by the need to make the company more valuable. But sometimes their policies go too far.
If the numbers presented in the video below are accurate, Patreon, the company, is unable to assume the App Store fees. I’ll even go as far as to say that it is mathematically impossible, as Patreon fees are lower than those of Apple. Which leaves two options: either the creator or the supporter will have to bear Apple fees.
I understand that Apple has a great system with almost zero friction, and that there are costs to operate it. What I don’t understand is the percentage. How can Patreon charge much less and even support all its operational expenses? Furthermore, does the amount charged by Apple even make sense when creators or supporters will be the ones paying for it?
My tiers on Patreon are pretty low because I’m not trying to explore anyone. I’m looking to build a community of people who are as passionate as I am and wish to help me by supporting my work. However, when Apple’s policies come into effect in the near future, I’ll have to switch to charging the App Store fee from the new supporters paying from there.
Apple, of course, is entitled to make its own business decisions, but forcing end users to pay more is unfair and, I dare say, unethical. Companies using the App Store should be allowed to explain that there’s a cheaper option to purchase a service. The way I see it, Apple is simply not giving users a choice.
This situation is another reminder that I have to keep my policy of not using any of Apple’s wall-gardened services, despite their quality. It’s also a good example of why the European Commission is constantly creating regulations to prevent big companies from doing whatever they want.
Looks like #Gmail just invented a time machine. I wrote “…ready for review around the 20th…” and it suggests “of July” 🤣. Jokes aside, it almost got me. For a second, I thought I was wrong about the month.
When #AI cannot even get the mouth right, why do people trust it so much?
“The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum”
—Rudolf Clausius
So does the entropy of your notes. It’s okay to not obsess over a perfect system, as it may be a waste of your time. Remember that you cannot predict everything, and variables are forever changing.
If you are an Evernote user, and you are finding yourself lost in the multitude of information you created, try AI-Powered Search. It might surprise you 😉
Why I think using an Inbox is a terrible idea.
What if I told you that years ago I decided to ditch the endless inbox organization in Evernote in favor of a more efficient workflow?
Some people collect ideas, tasks and other types of information in an inbox style folder, or notebook, when using Evernote. A periodic cleaning routine is what makes sure the items will be redistributed to the appropriate spaces from time to time. Other people, myself include, do the opposite. We select the destination when saving the information.
I do it because I consider those periodic routines, that some call revisions, to be a waste of time. One can argue that it doesn’t matter whether you choose the destination before or afterwords, as it will take roughly the same time to organize things. That’s true, but it’s not where the problem lies.
When redistributing information in a future moment, one has to go through all the items to remember what each one is about, and only after that, move them to the appropriate spaces. That time spent with the screening process will not happen when picking the destination at the same time the information is being created.
For example, if I have an idea for a YouTube video, it’s instantly clear to me that it belongs to my Creator notebook in my Evernote. It’s effortless because the topic is fresh in my mind. Meaning that I’ll automatically save the information in the correct notebook.
The other option means that I would have all sorts of note topics, from ideas for videos to meeting notes with clients, in the inbox notebook. It’s too divers, and I would always have to waste time going through many notes to remember what they are, and only after that, move them to the correct notebook. That revision, or whatever you prefer to call it, is time I never waste.
But there’s a catch. If you don’t have or know what are the right notebooks or folders, there’s no way to choose the correct one. That’s why I try to keep all the ones I use frequently as accessible as possible. To accomplish that, I’m constantly paying attention to how I’m doing things. When I notice friction, I always make sure to rearrange things to fit my needs, like I show in the video below.
Have I mentioned that one great benefit of doing things like this is that I don’t experience inbox-zero anxiety?
What about you? Do you use an inbox to process information in the future, or do you pick the destination to save information in the correct place?
🎁 Click here for the Evernote Personal plan with a 15% discount. Valid for returning users or current Free users subscribing to a 1-year Evernote Personal plan. Terms and conditions may apply.🔨 It’s official, I disassembled my first pallet last Saturday! Now, I need to buy some circular discs to sand all these wood. 80 grits, according to Google 😊
Supernote to Evernote: My Productivity Pipeline
Stuck in traffic? Let your mind wander! I turned a frustrating hour into a productive one. My secret? Capturing fleeting ideas with mental repetition and then using my Supernote to Evernote workflow to forever same them.
Last week, while stuck for nearly an hour in the mother of all traffic jams, I had some insights for an online course, and started building its structure mentally. And by frequently repeating the ideas to myself, I prevent them from fading away. This is a strategy I created and perfected over time to be able to remember the thoughts I frequently have when running.
As soon as I arrived home, I grabbed the Supernote out of my bag, wrote everything I had in mind, and exported the note to the Evernote folder. When I opened Evernote the next day, the ideas were right in front of me thanks to the automation I have in place (video below).
By the way, if you’d like to dive even deeper into my Supernote to Evernote workflow, I suggest also watching this other video.
I previously discussed the importance of chronology in my Evernote system, so I will not repeat myself. Let’s talk about what happened when I opened my laptop to work the next day.
My Evernote is set to always open on the home page, where I have the Notes widget showing me the most recent notes I worked on. In this case, it was the Supernote note.
When the automation sent that note to Evernote, that moment was set as the creation date of the note, making it the most recently used note in my Evernote.
Anyway, because my notebooks are ordered in revers chronological order, the first note in the Timeline notebook was also the Supernote note. In other words, it was remarkably easy to find the ideas I had the day before.
What I’m doing now is structuring all my thoughts in a notebook. First, I created a Summary note, which I pinned to the top of the notebook. Then I started creating a note for each chapter and dragging them to the Summary note. Chronology will mess up the order of the notes in the notebook, but that’s okay, as the Summary note will keep them in the right order.
It might be possible to have the list of notes ordered correctly by adding chapter numbers to the titles and setting the notebook order to alphabetical. But this would create too much friction every time I wanted to reorder chapters or add a new one in between existing ones. In other words, there’s no point in doing this, as I can easily do it on the Summary note by dragging the items up and down.
I have tried to use Evernote for this several times, but I have not been successful in the past. It was never as fluid as it is now. At first, I thought the new pinned note feature was making me more confident this time. It’s definitely helping because when I’m writing, I tend to jump from one chapter to another a lot.
However, another thing I frequently do when writing is reordering ideas (the chapters). So, after a while, I came to the conclusion that the not-so-new option to drag items up and down in a bullet list is also playing a significant part.
The book, or an online course, or both, is still in its very early stages. But if you are a supporter on Patreon or YouTube, there is a video for you where I demonstrate the notebook in my real account while discussing my process.
One-Time Setup, Longtime Rewards: Evernote Advanced Search
Unlock the hidden power of Advanced Search! One simple setup can transform the way you use Evernote.
Evernote search was always excellent, but before the AI-Powered Search, the only way to go a step further was by using the Advanced Search, also known as Evernote Grammar. The simplest way to describe it is as a set of commands that we can combine with each other and type in the search box to filter notes in a very specific way.
The Grammar is so powerful that it serves as the backbone for the AI-Powered Search. When you perform an AI search, the AI first converts the information you typed into an Advanced Search syntax. That’s what is used to filter a group of notes that are sent to the large language model, which then generates the answer you end up seeing.
The commands, also known as terms, are not that difficult to understand, but some are pretty hard to memorize. Which means that with the introduction of the AI-Powered Search, there’s no point in using them for everyday searches. However, I see them as super useful for creating dynamic Saved Searches or Widgets.
I could, for example, use the codes below to create a Filtered Notes Widget on Evernote Home that would show me all notes in my ‘Creator’ notebook without the tag ‘Done’.
notebook:Creator -tag:done
If you type the above into the ‘Keywords’ box of the Filtered Notes Widget, you’ll create a dynamic group of notes. Every time you add the tag ‘Done’ to a note in the ‘Creator’ notebook, that note will automatically be removed from the widget.
There’s a series of videos I’m producing to help you understand and use the Advanced Search. You can check out the most recent one below about Reminders to understand how powerful it is. If you decide that the Advanced Search can help you create a better system for your Evernote, take a look at the other videos and have fun.