Alex's ebook unlocks the professional power of Evernote

It wasn’t that long ago that “notebook” just meant the paper kind that you’d carry to meetings, refer to as you worked, and jot random thoughts down in… provided you had it with you.

Then came the web, and then smart mobile devices, and everything changed. Today’s web-based notebook lives on your laptop, desktop, tablet, smartphone and web browser. And the most successful by far is Evernote.

Synchronizing your notes across your various devices and the web is just the tip of Evernote’s iceberg (or, if you prefer, the flyleaf of the notebook). Evernote does everything from handwriting recognition to photo synchronizing to web clipping… and much more.

Figuring out how to harness all that power, though, can be a little daunting. (Your last paper notebook probably didn’t require help documentation.) To put Evernote’s features to work for you, it really helps to have the guidance of someone who not only knows the software itself, but how to make the most of it.

Enter Alex’s new ebook Work Smarter with Evernote, the first in the Work Smarter with Social Media series from Harvard Business Review Press. It’s available on Amazon, iTunes and HBR.org. (As of right now, it’s topping the time management category for Kindle volumes, and hit the number two spot for Amazon’s time management books.)

Work Smarter with Evernote isn’t a software manual. It’s a guide to using Evernote to make your professional life more effective, productive and satisfying. Alex shows you how to use Evernote to capture notes no matter where you are, and to organize your work and your priorities. And show you how to realize the full potential of Evernote’s social features — the ones that make it a powerful tool for collaboration.

Maybe best of all, you won’t have that long apprenticeship period where you have to patiently learn a tool’s intricacies before it starts being useful. Alex’s 30-minute setup guide can get a beginner up and running — or, if you’ve used it before but never really got it, let you give it a real try.

Alex draws on a wealth of experience and knowledge, both around the app itself — she was one of Evernote’s earliest adopters and evangelists, and is now Evernote’s research ambassador — and around effective online work and collaboration. (You can sample some of that expertise in a few of her recent posts for the Harvard Business Review, Vision Critical and Evernote.)

We hope you’ll check out Working Smarter with Evernote. And let us know what you think!

← Terms of service changes deserve more than just a shrug and a click Next time you’re getting down on yourself about how long it takes you to write… →

2 Comments

Dave Traynor on 28 Dec 2012 at 13:53

Thanks for the note about Alex’s new book. I’m a long-time user of Facebook, ever since I sat with Alex at the Beyond the Hype conference in Victoria and watched her process a whack of stuff in just a few minutes. It was like a mini-productivity demo right at the table. But I realize I’ve only scratched the surface of what can be done, so I’m looking forward to this book.

And just in case anyone tells you RSS isn’t useful anymore, that’s how I read this, and lucky I did, because I hadn’t noticed anything about the book anywhere else. I’ve been dropping out of social media lately while work commitments took up more and more time…

Thanks for all you do,
Dave

Rob Cottingham on 28 Dec 2012 at 16:03

Thanks so much for such a kind comment! And yes, there’s something downright poetic about watching Alex deal with information. It’s like a martial arts movie, except instead of a blizzard of kicks, blocks, punches and flips, she’s whipping reams of data into their appropriate slots, and rescuing insight and structure from the ninja-masked menace of confusion and disorganization. (Also, she’d never stretch a metaphor with quite that degree of cruelty.) I’d love to hear what you think of the book.

And about RSS: the forces of evil can take away my full-post feed when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. (I actually had someone show me Flipboard a while ago as an example of how far we’ve moved beyond RSS. Oh, people.)

Have a terrific 2013. And please let me know the next time you’re on this side of the Strait!

Dave Traynor on 28 Dec 2012 at 13:53
Thanks for the note about Alex’s new book. I’m a long-time user of Facebook, ever since I sat with Alex at the Beyond the Hype conference in Victoria and watched her process a whack of stuff in just a few minutes. It was like a mini-productivity demo right at the table. But I realize I’ve only scratched the surface of what can be done, so I’m looking forward to this book.
And just in case anyone tells you RSS isn’t useful anymore, that’s how I read this, and lucky I did, because I hadn’t noticed anything about the book anywhere else. I’ve been dropping out of social media lately while work commitments took up more and more time…
Thanks for all you do,
Dave
Rob Cottingham on 28 Dec 2012 at 16:03
Thanks so much for such a kind comment! And yes, there’s something downright poetic about watching Alex deal with information. It’s like a martial arts movie, except instead of a blizzard of kicks, blocks, punches and flips, she’s whipping reams of data into their appropriate slots, and rescuing insight and structure from the ninja-masked menace of confusion and disorganization. (Also, she’d never stretch a metaphor with quite that degree of cruelty.) I’d love to hear what you think of the book.
And about RSS: the forces of evil can take away my full-post feed when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. (I actually had someone show me Flipboard a while ago as an example of how far we’ve moved beyond RSS. Oh, people.)
Have a terrific 2013. And please let me know the next time you’re on this side of the Strait!