I have been a longtime user of Evernote and I have recommended Evernote to hundreds if not thousands of people as their primary note-taking tool.
It is so important that you have an application that you can quickly grab those ideas, grab a new image, maybe you have a quick conversation in the hallway or a quick conversation with someone and you need to grab that information quickly and easily.
However, in the past year, I have grown somewhat frustrated with the Evernote user interface and it's not so much that they've made many changes with Evernote, I'm just finding myself that there's too many clicks I need to take, too many steps in order for me to capture something new or to go find something new.
So recently, I took a test-drive of Google Keep and I have been most impressed.
So today I want to give you a short demo of Google Keep, how you can use it, and where I think it actually has an advantage over an application like Evernote when it comes to capturing notes.
The most important thing is how quickly you can capture those ideas, how quickly can you enter them, whether that's on your mobile device or whether that's on the desktop.
So right from the beginning, I love that it is upfront, right, it's upfront, it's easy to find.
I don't have to click on anything to get to search.
I probably shouldn't be so surprised since this product is from Google.
Also, the ability to take a note is upfront, right.
I don't need to select a plus symbol, I don't need to go find something else.
Very easy to capture a new note.
So let's add a few notes as an example.
I'm gonna call Jenny about dinner plans.
I can either hit done or just click outside of the box and it's gonna capture it there.
Like an email, Ted about the Tuesday meeting.
This time I'm just gonna hit done and you can see it sort of displays the notes in a bit of a post-it note style.
Most of them tend to be in sort of a square shape depending on what you're capturing.
Some other quick ways of capturing notes if you want to add a new list, I think this is a really big advantage over Evernote.
A quick way to create a new checklist.
So let's say I'm creating a grocery list, for example.
I'm just hitting enter, it's gonna grab me my very next item on that list.
So there I've got my quick checklist and not only was it easy to create but I can start interacting with that list without actually opening it up.
So I can just start crossing things off here without actually opening up the list in this view.
So it's very easy to check things off or uncheck things in that list.
The other quick way of capturing would be an image.
Now of course, on your mobile device, you can quickly take a photo but here on the desktop you're going to need to add an attachment.
I'm just gonna double click that, grab an image from my computer.
I can add a note here if I want, not necessary but let me just put that in there, hit done, and you can see it's nice and visual.
I can see the entire image or most of the image here, a great way to visualize my notes.
Now, one disadvantage, especially for those used to the Evernote infrastructure, is that Google Keep does not allow you to sort by creation date or the last day that you edited a note or by alphabetical order.
It's very much a drag-and-drop application, so you sort of need to manage which notes you want to see up front and which ones you want to perhaps group together.
But I'm gonna show you in just a minute how you can filter, how you can create labels, how you can create tags that makes filtering and finding your notes that much easier.
Well, let's go into some of the additional features that you can add or change to a note.
I'm gonna bring this one up here which involves a phone call.
So you can add a reminder time to a phone call.
It gives you a few defaults here which you can change in the settings section here.
So I'm gonna say, let's say tomorrow at 8 a.m. I want to be reminded of this task tomorrow at 8 a.m.
I set it there, it said I can see it listed at the bottom of the note, it's gonna remind me tomorrow at 8 a.m.
But the great thing, the great bonus if you are a Google Calendar user is that this reminder that you've set in Google Keep will also display there.
You see it there, it is in my Google Calendar, will also show up there.
So I love that integration within the Google ecosystem is that you can create a reminder here in your notes very quickly, very easily while you're on the go and it will appear in your Google Calendar.
A few other options, you have the ability to share notes.
This grocery list would probably be a great example of that.
So let's say, you know, you and your spouse or maybe someone else that you live with, the first one in the grocery store, you want them to pick up these items.
Well, I can add one or more email addresses to this particular note and then they can edit that note and interact with it as well.
So a great way to collaborate with others is the ability to share.
Now you can also label your notes in a few different ways.
One is by color.
So let's say I want my grocery list to be red, I want it to stand out a little bit.
Maybe my domestic things, right, things around the house or errands, I want a particular color so I can make that red.
And maybe my phone calls, I want all my phone calls to be blue.
Whatever type of color scheme or whatever makes sense to you, you can very quickly and easily change those colors.
Now by default, it gives you the option to archive, which I highly recommend with any note-taking or note-capturing device just in case you want to go back and retrieve it later.
But if you select the more option, you can actually delete that note altogether.
Now the one additional label or way that you can add a tag to a note is by adding a label.
I've only just created the one so far, here's the work label.
So now you can see if I click on that, it's going to filter anything that has work on it.
Let's maybe add work to this one as well.
So now it's just free, it's quick and easy, I can either select work on the left-hand side or if I go back to all my notes, I can select work on the note itself and it's just gonna filter out everything there.
Let me show you one other way that you can add labels quicker and easier than actually selecting this drop-down menu.
So I'm gonna say change labels, I'm gonna uncheck that so it doesn't have work anymore, and within the note, I'm just gonna add a hashtag.
Right, and there comes up all of my labels.
I've only got one at the moment, but now I can select that, hit done, and now I've got my label in there.
So as I'm typing a new note, let's say, you know, sent out the meeting agenda and I'm gonna say hashtag work.
Okay, there it is, I don't have to select anything, I can just put in the hashtag and now that's gonna be a part of my collection of notes that I want filtered under work.
So last thing I want to show you is the ability to sort of filter and search.
So up here, if you just click the search bar, you'll notice that it starts to categorize a few things already for you.
So you can filter by just reminders, and I only got the one, there's my reminder.
All your lists, I only have a couple, right, only have a few in my Google Keep anyhow, I've only got one list here.
But a quick way to sort of filter out which of your notes have images, if you just want to see the notes that have images, quick easy.
All your labels will show up here.
Here, you can see that Google actually starts to categorize some of the themes, notices that you have some things related to food or groceries and also the different colors that you are using.
But of course, you can just type in text and right away it's gonna show you all of your notes that contain text.
Now one really important thing to keep in mind if you are considering moving from Evernote to Google Keep is that there is no such thing as a notebook in Google Keep.
So there's no such thing as a folder structure within Google Keep.
It's really sort of one main space to collect all of your notes and then either by color, either by label, or this tag formatting you can add these things to your, that's really the only way that you can filter out your notes.
But unless you're an author, unless you're a writer and you're keeping very, very large documents in your notes, Google Keep is an excellent choice for capturing those quick ideas, capturing those quick photos and being able to retrieve them very quickly when you need to go back, see what is to become a project, what needs to be turned into a reminder or a task.
So check out Google Keep, let me know how you find Google Keep or how it compares to Evernote, and make sure that you always have some way of capturing those ideas right away.
It's very simple.
