Sometimes tools can help you perform better

If you want to make changes in your life you'll want all the help you can get.

There is a lot of help available out there. From personal coaches and trainer to gadgets and gizmos that promise to make life easier than ever.

Today I'll pass over the personal therapy stuff and tell you about just one tool that I use everyday to make me more effective in the areas I choose to work.

Note taking/Scrapbooking on your computer

How often do you find an article on a web site and bookmark to read later or keep for the information only to be unable to find it after the event?

Perhaps you have meetings with people and collect their business card only to be unable to find the card at the time you need it. This used to happen to me too. Then I found a program called Evernote.

Evernote is a web based program that also work locally on your PC or smartphone. It allows you to clip text or pictures from web pages and add useful tags to the data. It can also store documents in PDF and pictures in JPG formats also with tags.

Now so far, so dull. So what you may say, I've got notebooks and a photo album big deal.

Imagine now that you meet a new contact for the first time, you exchange business cards. Now instead of slipping the card into your wallet or purse you take a picture of it and email it to your Evernote account. You tag it with words related to the situation, perhaps location, nature of business or product, who introduced you and more if you choose.

Search by tags

Now all that information is sent to your Evernote account and is searchable by the tags. You can choose to send it to a notebook within your account by adding @notebookname to the subject line. Tags are added by use #tagword.

At first nothing much changes about how you work but gradually you generate a bigger database of data and finding those elusive bits of information gets much easier. You can search by tag, by word, by date or even by using Optical character recognition that Evernote has built in.

Reads handwriting

Now things get even more interesting, you may have made some notes during the meeting. Take a picture of the notes and send it to Evernote. Use tags to define it. Evernote search will even try to recognise the words you write longhand (and generally does a pretty good job).

There are hundreds of uses for Evernote  but here are some that I find useful almost everyday.

Take a picture of every business card you collect. Tag it and send it to Evernote.

Do your children make lots of lovely drawing that you hate to throw away (but that clutter the home)? No problem. Use the @ function to send a picture from your smartphone to an Evernote notebook tagged with the child's name. (Make sure you download the Evernote application to your phone too. It sometimes slow to load because of local data rates but it can be a real life saver when you need THAT bit of information.)

Use it to store login names/passwords for your accounts (Evernote data is encrypted). Be careful about this on a shared PC though.

Clip articles, recipes, holiday locations and more by using the web clipper function that integrates with Firefox and Chrome web browser. Clip the whole page or just the selected text and tag it as you do so.

Use it as an area to store your daily todo list.

Use it to store important PDF documents that you need to refer to wherever you happen to be.

Create a notebook and call it "things I want". Next time you see that certain something on Amazon or elsewhere, tag it and send it the Evernote notebook.

Use it to collect information on articles or blog posts you want to write. Goodbye shoebox of clippings.

Photograph your store receipts and fuel purchase receipts to make expense claims and money tracking much easier.

Upload important travel documents before you go. (Evernote can be accessed by an computer with a web browser.)

Take a picture of your passport and you'll always have it available on Evernote should the actual item be lost or stolen.

Store and tag inspiring quotes for the next time you have to give a talk or wedding speech.

Share a notebook securely with a co-worker so that you can work collaboratively online.

 Make audio visual notes by using the Web Cam facility.

Record audio notes from your smart phone and upload to Evernote.

If you have GPS on your smartphone notes can be sorted by latitude and longitude. Would that be useful to budding Estate Agents and Letting Agents?

User the Ink note feature to sketch and idea on screen  and then email the note to a fellow worker or friend.

Notes can be easily shared with others by email. Genius for those who work with others whose memory is not as good as yours. (or perhaps they have never heard of Evernote)

The basic version of Evernote is free with a maximum monthly upload limit but there is a paid for version too that allows more data and a wider variety of document types to be uploaded.

I have no doubt you'll find your own fantastic ways to use Evernote. Why note share them here as a comment?