Welcome to the first installment of #healthtechwriter Tuesday! Technology is proving to be so important to a writer’s life that I wanted to give you some of my own suggestions on what tools you can use in your health and wellness business to help you remain productive.
Evernote for Nonfiction Writers
You may have heard of Evernote (unless you’ve been living under a rock…). But in any case, Evernote is a great productivity tool for wellness business owners who want to keep their writing on track.
Evernote is an online notetaking and archival system that can be used for organizing anything from your healthy recipes, to your wellness blog posts, to even your ideas for writing your book.
How I Use Evernote on a Daily Basis
Inspiration for a blog post or a future book can hit at any moment. And you want to make sure you are ready to capture these moments or risk losing them forever.
What you see in the above photo are a few of the notebooks I have kept in the year 2014 alone. All those brilliant brainstorms archived with a simple pad and paper. I’ve got a notebook for my daily to do list. I’ve got another notebook for my women’s health blog, Still yet another notebook for personal thoughts.
The problem comes when I get ready to actually RETRIEVE some of those brilliant brainstorms. Sometimes I date the pages — most times I don’t. So then I am left sitting around thinking where was I when I was writing these thoughts — perhaps that will help to jog my memory. But it never works.
Evernote helps me to retrieve those brainstorms. What Evernote does so brilliantly is that it takes away the need to purchase separate notebooks for every project you work on. With Evernote, you are able to create a “new” notebook in the same way you would create a file folder on your laptop. You can see how the pile of notebooks (seen in the above photo) turn into a list of neat notebooks I can easily retrieve when I get ready to use them (see photo below).
I’ve got a “notebook” for my copywriting coaching program with Ed Gandia called B2B Business Launcher. Then I’ve got notebooks for my blogs. Then there is a general notebook for random thoughts. Then, of course, my daily to do list.
There is no “wrong” or “right” way to organize your notebooks. Feel free to organize your notebooks any way you see fit.
How to Use Tags to Organize Your Notebooks
Evernote allows you to use tags in the same way you would use in WordPress or a bookmarking system would. Tags are keywords that you can use to help you find notes that are similar to each other. For example, I may want to retrieve all my notes pertaining to book ideas that may be spread across several notebooks. As long as I tag the post with the keywords, “book ideas,” I will be able to pull it up. So much simpler than trying to go through pages and pages of written notes.
Other great uses for evernote
For those of you who are big on developing recipes, then you will love Evernote. You can upload your photos and create a notebook for all the different types of recipes you create.
If you are conducting interviews for your blog or book, you can upload video and audio interviews into its own notebook (or however you choose to organize it) along with notes from your session. Got an audio transcript? Throw that in there too!
See a blog post or a website you’d like to share at a later date? Save it in Evernote!
Want an easy way to keep track of your business receipts? Evernote can save it for you.
Do you need to take notes from a white board or even a handout? Take a photo of it with your phone and upload to Evernote.
Can Evernote Replace Pen and Paper?
For me, Evernote will never replace pen and paper. I love using pen and paper for big brainstorming projects. There is something about using my hands to do the rough work of just getting my thoughts on paper.
However when I get ready to take those ideas and organize them into a neat package, Evernote becomes my step #2! Again, the ability to retrieve these brilliant brainstorms is where I see the most value in Evernote for nonfiction writers, whether you are blogging or writing your next book.
How to get evernote on your device
If you are ready to give Evernote a try, you can head over to their website. Sign up for an account there and immediately get to work (did I tell you it’s FREE?). You can also download it to any of your devices like your phone or tablet so you can access it on the go.
How do you see Evernote helping you to write your health and wellness books and/or blog posts?
