Organizing your personal knowledge base in Evernote

I got acquainted with Evernote about five years ago, but at first I didn’t actively use it - I had unsystematic notebooks for writing ideas, documents, some rare photos, and that’s all. The tasks I controlled kept in Things , and the content in Evernote. About four years ago I began to form my personal knowledge base from content, modifying it every six months. And now, as a year, I have been making only minor changes in the structure. Here's what I got:

Composition knowledge

My knowledge base is built on several vectors in which I work (operational activities are my areas of responsibility in business) and live (sports, travel, family, health). Formats of knowledge can be divided into two types: documents and diaries (my reflection).
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System device

In terms of operational activities, such a system is a convenient business tool for me - in Redmadrobot we have department colleagues (HR, project office, company development, etc.) have joint notebooks ( “In Work” category), where we upload working materials . For example, on HR, there are templates for responding to requests from applicants, texts of vacancies, etc.



In parallel with the working materials, there are my own notes that are not accessible to colleagues ( "Diaries" ). Writing down what turns out to be failing is extremely useful. There is a cool book - “The Conquest of the South Pole. Leadership Race by Roland Huntford, in which there are many entries from the diaries of Amundsen and Scott. Why did polar explorers keep journals even at the planning stage of expeditions? To preserve and comprehend the most valuable practical experience. After reading this book, I realized that the diaries should be divided thematically - and in the course of the project (“Developing a Strategy”, “Budget 2015”, “Course on Managing High-Risk Projects”, “Running Technique”, etc.) periodically return to the records and rethink them.

If a person commits a lot of different-format actions during the day, then there is a great chance that valuable ideas or remarks that were born in the process will be filled with constantly received information. It's like recording a dream. In fact, I simultaneously have several “expeditions” at once - in each area of ​​responsibility. By keeping diaries on them and periodically re-reading them, I bring up valuable ideas, make corrections to projects.

As I perform my work duties and in my usual life (for example, in sports), I pump over some of my skills. To do this, I have a category of "University" , in which I contribute subjects and begin to study them. For example, I needed to pump up delegation of authority - I created a special notebook, compiled a list of books, articles and other materials in it, read them, analyzed them, made a summary, put them together in a certain system, then I tried this system in practice and received feedback .



I record this feedback and materials and put it in the “Knowledge” category, from there I transfer it to the “Thought Forms” in a super-compressed form (like a check list) - if I need to delegate something to someone, I open these 5-7 rules and they unfold a complete picture for me.

When projects are completed, the useful experience of them develops in the “Knowledge” , and the project itself is placed in the “Archive” . I rarely delete something.

I also have a “Research” block, where I am drafting some thoughts related to management, for example. It is too early to convert what is too early to transfer to the “University” for study into a separate project within the framework of the main activity.

The “Inbox” category is an input information message collector. If I don’t know where to put the note, it goes to the Inbox . If I have something in the mail, some document or important correspondence, I can send it to my internal Evernote mailbox and everything will turn into a note and attachments. Once a week I clear this category - laying out notes in appropriate notebooks or deleting. If you don’t want to delete at all, but there is no transportation decision, the note falls into the “Someday” category, which I update once a month. By the way, projects and subjects from the “University” in the inactive hold-stage, get into it.

The category “People” - there I keep notes on personalities with whom I intersect in the mode of daily activities (employees, partners, etc.). I mark the features of each person, create a mini-card file, profiles.

The categories related not to work, but to a greater degree to ordinary life are “Places” , “Documents” , “Health” . When traveling around the world, I can, for example, take a picture of a cafe, hotel, just some place, write down its name and its feelings from it. Technical archive of passports, policies and other documents, accessible from any device, it is convenient. The same thing about health - certificates, survey results, etc. - All this is usually stored in paper form or in the polyclinic electronic system, but you can just take a picture of it and always have it at hand.

In general, I got this, David Allen for the knowledge base.