Evernote box? (Taken with Instagram at Apple - The Company Store)

Evernote box? (Taken with Instagram at Apple - The Company Store)


Use Evernote as a Personal Agile System

Let’s start with this: I love Evernote. I use it constantly when I’m on the go. Jot down reminders and thoughts, record voice memos, tweet myself, send tweets from Seesmic, send emails, Chrome clips, etc.

At work we have been slowly transitioning to an agile development methodology, and it’s growing on me. Break a feature down into tasks. Closely track them. Complete.

Recently, I had an epiphany. Why not try to use Evernote in a similar way to manage my personal life?

Well, here’s what I came up with.

Create 3 Notebooks

Backlog, Current, and Done. I chose these words because they appear in alphabetical order in Evernote. I’d prefer to use In Progress instead of Current, but Evernote won’t let you manually change the order.

Create Tasks

This is an example task for a college student (specifically a Cornell undergrad who is currently enrolled in Econometrics). I broke it down into the usual college paper sub-tasks: read, outline, write, review, submit. I also added a “ToDo” checkbox for each sub-task so I can keep track of my progress on the overall task.

Shift Tasks Between Notebooks

Once you’re ready to begin working on the Econ 321 Paper task, drag it from the Backlog notebook into the Current notebook. As you complete each sub-task, mark it done using a checkbox.

Now your paper is done and you’ve emailed it to your Professor (or lovely TA). Drag the task to Done.

There you go. Evernote + Agile = Awesome.


Evernote Notable Tech Event: I caught a ride with Caroline and Ziv, two Eye-Fi employees, to check out the Evernote Notable Tech Event at 111 Minna Gallery in SF. I didn’t realize Evernote’s service had been integrated into so many other products. It was cool seeing how other companies are increasing the value of their products by including the ability to link data to Evernote. The panel, titled Managing Competition in Tech, was moderated by Guy Kawasaki (wow you really see this guy everywhere when you attend tech events), and the panelists were Phil Libin, Loic Le Meur, and Adeo Ressi. Here are my takeaways from the panel: Good VCs don’t sign NDAs Do the opposite of what your feelings tell you to do Do what you love Make your great product - ignore your competitors Meet your competition And a special lecture on TechCrunch’s lack of importance: Coverage on TC = ~1500 users 90% are gone 2 days later Remaining 10% become your alpha users - use them to grow your product Lastly, Loic introduced himself by saying, “Hi my name is at Loic.” He was also wearing a shirt that said “@loic” on it.
Evernote Notable Tech Event:

I caught a ride with Caroline and Ziv, two Eye-Fi employees, to check out the Evernote Notable Tech Event at 111 Minna Gallery in SF. I didn’t realize Evernote’s service had been integrated into so many other products. It was cool seeing how other companies are increasing the value of their products by including the ability to link data to Evernote.

The panel, titled Managing Competition in Tech, was moderated by Guy Kawasaki (wow you really see this guy everywhere when you attend tech events), and the panelists were Phil Libin, Loic Le Meur, and Adeo Ressi.

Here are my takeaways from the panel:
Good VCs don’t sign NDAs
Do the opposite of what your feelings tell you to do
Do what you love
Make your great product - ignore your competitors
Meet your competition

And a special lecture on TechCrunch’s lack of importance:
Coverage on TC = ~1500 users
90% are gone 2 days later
Remaining 10% become your alpha users - use them to grow your product

Lastly, Loic introduced himself by saying, “Hi my name is at Loic.” He was also wearing a shirt that said “@loic” on it.