Peace of Mind Organizing

Using the Reminders feature of Evernote

10 January 2017

I’ve finally embraced Evernote and it’s become an indispensable part of my work and life. Every now and then I think about writing another blog post about how I use Evernote and I get overwhelmed at the thought of it. So my plan is to highlight one feature at a time, as the mood strikes me. Today I’m going to focus on the Reminders feature of Evernote, which I absolutely love.

With Reminders, you can ask Evernote to remind you of something on a specific day or time. I get an Evernote notification on the lock screen on my phone and in the notifications on my MacBook. I also get an email. I love having all those bases covered.

How is this different from using my iPhone’s reminders? The big difference is that I can attach Evernote notes to the reminder. I use reminders on my phone all the time, for things like taking the laundry out of the dryer or taking my vitamins. But Evernote reminders feel more robust and less ephemeral.

Here are a few examples of how I use it:

• When I receive an email that requires future action, I’ll forward the email to my Evernote account and then set a reminder to do the task. The email is then put in front of me on the appropriate day.

• When I sign up for a telesminar, I’ll forward the confirmation to Evernote and set a reminder. On the day of the teleseminar, I get a reminder that I can click to see the email with the call in instructions.

• If I need to follow up on an email (say, somebody promised me they’ll do something and I don’t want to forget), I’ll forward the email the promiser sent and set a reminder to follow up on it and the appropriate time. This has been a life saver.

• When I don’t want to forget to cancel a subscription, the Reminders feature saves my bacon. For example, just under a month ago I subscribed to Consumer Reports online so that I could check out ratings on tires. You pay $7 or so for a month and if you don’t cancel it automatically renews. I didn’t want to cancel as soon as I got my tire information, in case some other need came up in the month. So I created an Evernote reminder to remind me two days in advance that I needed to cancel. That reminder appeared this morning. I had no recollection of needing to cancel that subscription. It would have gone on until I noticed it on my credit card bill.

One downside to Evernote reminders is that you can’t set them as recurring. Here’s my workaround: For recurring tasks I embed the instruction to reset the reminder. For example, I have a task I do monthly for NAPO-St. Louis that I can’t seem to save in my brain. So I wrote an Evernote reminder and included in the reminder note, “Then reset this reminder for next month.”

I would never get Evernote just to use the reminders feature. But since I’m already using it, I find the Reminders to be a really wonderful benefit.

Tagged with: evernote, productivity, task management, technology

Comments