figure out how to use Evernote by doing a trial run

Often when I am asked why I like Evernote so much I find it difficult to give a brief answer that really does the tool justice. I think this is because the usefulness of Evernote grows in direct proportion to how much you use it.

My usual approaches to explaining Evernote are not as effective as I would like

So if somebody has never used the tool before, short of telling them to just try it, there is no real way to give them a good frame of reference. Sometimes I try to answer the question by explaining the main features of the tool – only to be met with a glazed over look by the person. Other times, I try to explain by showing them examples of how I use the tool. But the problem with this approach is that my needs are most likely not the same as their needs and my examples may not resonate with the core problem that Evernote could solve for them. It can also be overwhelming to look at my set up because I use so many notebooks and tags.

From now on I am going to try a new approach

  • Encourage them to do a small experiment to see if Evernote is something they could use to solve a problem.The great thing about doing a trial is that it takes a small time investment and allows you to ‘kick around the tires’ without trying to become an advanced user right away
  • Point them to useful resources that can help them tweak their system until the tool is truly personalized to their needs
  • Offer myself as a resource to help them ‘hack’ their system even further if they want to

So if you have been wondering about Evernote and how to make it useful, try the following steps to get started:

  1. Create an Evernote account and install it on all your devices
  2. Create 2 notebooks: Inbox and Archive.  Do this by renaming the default notebook to ‘Inbox’ and creating a new one called ‘Archive’.
  3. Pick one thing that you are going to use Evernote for and commit to doing that for a week.

During you trial run of Evernote, if you think of other ways you could be using it, go ahead and do so. Some will be good ideas and others you will abandon.

Its not a big deal because the purpose is exposure and not mastery.

I found the following resources very helpful in thinking about how I could use Evernote to keep organized

As you read them, try and incorporate any of the tips that look like they would be helpful to you.   After your trial, post a comment on this post to let me know how it went – or to ask any questions when you need help. I enjoy coming up with creative ways to use Evernote so it wil be fun for me to research for you.

You can also send me a DM @komasworld.

watching my daughter grow up

From the first time I laid eyes on my first born as the doctor helped her out of the womb, I knew that I am one of those fathers who is completely ‘whipped’ by their kids.  As I watch my two year old slowly figure out the world around him, I know that these moments have to be cherished because they cannot be re-lived.

I’m slowly accepting the reality that I only have one little girl now (not two).

Earlier this year when my oldest turned eight I began feeling a sense of loss that I have not yet shaken off.  I know that she is no longer a ‘little girl’ – and the days are coming soon where there will be a whole litany of topics that she can only discuss with her mother.

And as much as I want to avoid it, the topic of ‘boys’ is right around the corner.  The comments about the Justin Beiber-obsessed friends at school pretty much assures me we are on that horizon.

So how am I helping myself deal with my emotions?

I think I have two coping mechanisms for dealing with my emotions around this.

One: Cherishing the ‘little girl’ moments I have left with my five year old.

The middle child is still very much a little girl who gets a kick out of being picked up or cuddling with her daddy. She still sees the world very simply and often cracks the whole family up with a very well timed and pithy comment about a situation.

Even the things that should annoy me more – like her inability to clean the sink properly after brushing her teeth. Or the way she completely shuts down and can’t function when she is hungry.

These things are all ‘joys’ for me to experience.

Two: Creating ‘male bonding’ moments with my son.

The second way in which I am subconsciously coping is the great satisfaction I get from hearing my son ask for the basketball game to be turned on for him to watch.

Or how much he relishes imitating Biz Markie’s beatbox with me from Biz’s Beat of the Day.

He even has the hip hop finger wagging down and I didn’t teach it to him.

While my five year old is helping me deal with my sense of losing the innocence of my older daughter, my son helps me deal with the sense of losing some portion of her experiences that her mother will relate to better with her.

There is comfort in know that there will be some exclusive experiences that I will share with him as he develops into a man.

This all leaves me with one question though:

“What will I do when the five year old turns eight?”

google hangout with Sacha Chua

Hangouts-Logo

On Friday I had a Google Hangout session with one of my favorite bloggers, Sacha Chua, who writes the blog “Living an Awesome Life.” This was a new experience for me in reaching out and networking with a fellow writer who I have been following (and admiring) from a distance.  Despite my nervousness prior to the Hangout, it was an awesome experience (pun intended).

A few weeks ago, I made a concious effort to engage more on the places that I have an online presence and so far I have found the experience to be quite rewarding.  Part of that experiment is to actively comment on blogs where the author is covering a topic that I care about and feel that I can contribute to the conversation.

In Sacha’s case, she blogged about some questions she was asking herself about the direction of her blog and I felt that a lot of the issues she was reflecting on were in line with the Platform theme I have this year.  So I wrote a long comment in response to the post and was quite surprised when she offered to do a Skype call or Google Hangout to discuss the topic further.

I did not know what to expect when I joined the Hangout on Friday but she immediately put me at ease with her calm and humble nature.  We covered a wide range of topics at the beginning of the call – from some of the challenges of communicating with family that lives overseas, to how much we both love learning new things.

When we moved into the meat of our conversation, there were three key areas that we covered:

One: How can Sacha reach more people while staying true to her ‘brand’?

A consistent theme that emerged while talking with Sacha (and something that I share with her) was her desire to remain authentic to her ‘true self’ through the process of building out her platform.  For her, building her platform is not about fame or increased profits.  She genuinely loves sharing with people about things she learns and helping those people ‘live an awesome life’ in whatever way that means for them.  She has a good income from her offlilne consulting work and doesn’t feel the need to focus on monetizing.

Although she is already very active on the main social networks and has a pretty good following that she shares her thoughts, ideas and help with, I recommended Michael Hyatt’s book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World as good reading for thinking about all of the aspects involved in building out a platform.  The book has a lot of focus on building a platform to mass and monetizing it – two things that I know are not focuses for Sacha right now – but I thought the framework he provides would be a good template to use.

Two: What type of things make sense for Sacha to ‘package’ from the topics she covers in her blog posts?

In addition to the book suggestion, my personal recommendation for Sacha on how to reach more people was that she looks for ways to ‘package’ some of her content into ‘bite size pieces’ that people who are not blog readers could consume and still get the ‘essense of Sacha’.  Some of the work she does with Sketchnoting is an excellent example of this and she has already had a very positive reaction to one of the topics she has started packaging in that way.

In addition to sketchnotes, I suggested she consider creating free ebooks on some of the other areas she consistently covers on her blog like ‘The Quantified Self‘ and her ‘5 Year Experiment‘.

Three: How can Sacha help people who are starting out or trying to be more consistent writers / bloggers?

The last topic we spent a lot of time on was sort of a ‘therapy session’ for me.  Sacha asked how she can help people like myself who are either starting out with blogging or desire to become more consistent in their writing.  My honest answer was that I didn’t know what would help since I was still trying to work it out for myself.

We spent a long time talking about what we both agreed was the root cause of a lot of the main struggles in becoming more consistent (The Resistance) and something Sacha said stuck with me and I think will help me going forward. I asked her how she keeps to such a prolific posting schedule and whether she ever feels a pressure that she is going to let her readers down if she doesn’t post.

Her answer was that she would be letting herself down.

In addition to a forum for sharing, Sacha really sees her blog as a holding place for her thoughts because she doesn’t ‘trust her memory’ and because she sees the blog that way, regardless of whether or not somebody reads a post she puts up, she continues to write because it helps her work through her thoughts and organize them.  This perspective on the process of blogging is very freeing because it helps me to avoid some of the second-guessing and perfectionism that makes me inconsistent.

As a practical follow-up to our discussion, Sacha is going to pilot a Google Hangout session in mid-June and I agreed to participate as one of her ‘guinea pigs’.  I am looking forward to that session and using it as motivation to get back on a consistent schedule so that I have some good questions for her during that talk.

love and tolerance

It’s easy to be loving and tolerant when you agree with a person’s lifestyle and views. The real test is when you fundamentally disagree with a person’s point of view but you still love them anyway.

Love <> Always Agree

having the idea is easy

This quote is from an excerpt of a discussion about the craftsmanship and process that is required to take an idea to a remarkable product. Its the reason two people can have an almost identical idea and only one of them turns it into something successful:

… one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen …

-Steve Jobs-

The rest of the quote is here on the Signal vs. Noise blog.

weekly review week ending april 6, 2013

Blog Posts

weekly review – week ending march 30, 2013
think of your business card as a doorway instead of a signpost

Quotes

the myth of waiting for inspiration

Platforms

Most of the platform work this week was on my own blog. I installed stats tracking and started paying attention to where my traffic is coming from and what is causing reactions to my content. I have a couple of tests running currently to see how I can more effectively reach people and provide them with meaningful content.

I also did some tweaking to the design to make headings within posts more prominent in blue.

Hard Edges

I finally declared ‘bankruptcy’ on my Evernote inbox and moved everything to a >>PROCESS notebook so I can chip at it gradually. I want my INBOX notebook to be meaningful and only contain notes for things I am actually working on, so that’s part of the clean up of hard edges this week.

Auto-transfers for the Quicken plan are all scheduled. Now to monitor the test and start tweaking where things don’t go as planned – in other words – “now the fun begins”.

Reflection

I did a lot of thinking about identity and what types of symbols we identify with in different areas of our lives. I was especially interested in flags and the kinds of emotions they evoke. Some good writing fodder here.

I am not reading enough long form non-fiction so this coming week, its back to books and less blogs.

This week is also my 11th wedding anniversary – lots to reminisce about and dream for the future about.

Mentorship

I had a good coffee meeting with a young man who is doing an internship this summer in the same industry as I’m in. I was very impressed by how proactive he has been to this point in his junior year. Most of the opportunities he has gotten have come from making himself ‘visible’ to leaders at companies or startups that he is interested in. His internship last summer came from him attending an event and talking to the heads of the company – and then following up and keeping the relationship going.

I recommended ‘The Start-up of You’ to him because I think he is exactly the kind of person that would take the advice in that book and use it very effectively.

Lean Methods

I could have done a better job using lean methods for my analysis at work last week but I allowed some temporary roadblocks to slow me down instead of attacking the problem from a different angle. This week, I will be more aggressive about getting to results.

think of your business card as a doorway instead of a signpost

Your online reputation is becoming increasingly more important than your business card and ignoring this trend will not make it go away.

But it may impact you in ways you don’t intend.

Business cards are clutter

Traditionally, business cards have served two main functions:

  1. provide a snapshot of how to reach you
  2. enhance the credibility of your role, function or business

I used to have a large collection of business cards because every time I met a new person, that was the best way to retain a quick snapshot of who they were and how to get in touch with them.

I also printed up business cards whenever I started up a new venture to give myself ‘credibility’ and make sure people could reach me. At one point, I carried around three business cards because I was working on three unrelated ventures at the same time.

Between carrying my own cards to give out and holding onto business cards from others, I often had a George Costanza wallet.

Today, this kind of wallet clutter is unnecessary. Instead, when I meet someone new, I ask them for an email address and/or cell phone number and enter them straight into my smartphone where the information automatically syncs up to all my communication devices. If somebody asks how to reach me, I give them my email address which is a more reliable way to reach me than my phone number.

With the ubiquity of digital ways to exchange contact information, the first function of the business card is becoming obsolete.

Your online presence is a competitive advantage

The second function of a business card, credibility, is easily trumped by your online presence.

Consider the following scenario:

You are trying to settle on a contractor to finish your basement. Your budget is $20,000 and the two remaining candidates both have great ideas – their quotes are a only few hundred dollars apart.

Because this is a significant investment, you meet with each of the contractors separately and tell them you need a few days to make your decision.

On departure, the first contractor hands you a business card and tells you to call him or email anytime if you have questions. He has an attractive, glossy business card with his cell phone number and an AOL email address. There is no url for a website but he gives you a few names of references to call.

The second contractor also hands you a business card and tells you to call or email. The business card is less attractive but still professional. It has his cell phone number, a website url and an email address that matches the website. He doesn’t volunteer any references but tells you to ‘check out his website’.

When you visit the second contractor’s website, you find a gallery page with ‘before and after’ pictures of several other basements he has completed. You also find a page of testimonials from satisfied customers.

But the place you spend the most time is the YouTube channel you get to from a link on his website; it contains short videos of him demonstrating several home improvement tips and tricks. One of the videos helps you fix a small problem in your house that has been bugging you for a few weeks.

You call him up and ask if its okay for you to speak to some of the past customers that left testimonials on the website. He gives you some names which you call and they all talk about what a great job he did and how much they learned from him and his videos.

Because you don’t have a url for the first contractor, you google his name and his company name to see what comes up. You find a few yellow pages entries that contain the same contact information on the business card.

You call the references he gave you and they all say he did a great job.

At this point, are you still conflicted about which contractor to choose?

Despite the similarity of their ideas and quotes, the second contractor would have significantly more credibility with me than the first even if the first one had the better business card and just as many references.

The first contractor’s approach to credibility is through the attractiveness of his business card and the list of references he provides. The business card is a signpost of his services.

But the second contractor uses his business card as a doorway to enchanting you even before you pay him a single dollar. His approach to credibility is through the engagement and generosity that is enabled by his online presence – he not only tells you about his services, he ‘gives away’ his expertise to you for free.

I believe the second approach will win in the majority of situations because it goes beyond a transaction and focuses on building a relationship. The second contractor is leveraging the power of a platform to differentiate himself and build a tribe of followers that will act as an extension of his marketing.

Market by connecting and engaging

I’ve used the example of a business card but this concept applies to any of the traditional pieces of collateral that we use for credibility and marketing.

It applies to brochures, postcards, billboards, posters, giveaways.

It applies to your resume.

All this collateral is not an end in itself – it should be used as a doorway to invite your prospects into a connection and relationship with you.

It is this connection that will yield the most fulfilling and impactful results in your career and business.

weekly review – week ending march 30, 2013

Blog Posts

doing teaches you a lot more than planning
how passion works in guiding your path

Quotes

the fear of missing out
studying without doing

Platforms

This week was primarily web design work and updating my WordPress CMS skills. Updated my sister’s fashion website homepage using CSS grid and div styling. Updated another platform website for LV and learned how to convert posts to post excerpts on the homepage as well as creating a gallery for displaying pictures.

Hard Edges

I finally updated Quicken to the point that I am comfortable setting up automated system for finances. This week’s focus is calculating amounts and scheduling all the auto-transfers.

Reflection

Easter weekend is always a time of reflection for me about my faith. The most powerful thought that I need to process more and blog about this week was the idea that God is both in the Light and the Darkness in our lives. We tend to attribute too much to the Enemy without seeing what the Lord is working through us with adversity.

I’ve also started reading Decisive by one of my favorite writing teams, The Heath Brothers. Plenty to chew on here about how we make decisions and the flaws in most of our approaches to deciding.

Mentorship

I’m still working with my brother and his job search. I have to think through some additional strategies and contacts in my network that could help him get more traction. I need to be a better coach to him too. I’m thinking about the importance of balancing strategy, coaching and cheerleading as a general approach to mentorship.

I’m also helping another mentee with career/job search related issues that led to this post.

Lean Methods

Not much update here this week but this upcoming week, I have to use this approach to some analysis at work.