Evernote Explained: Evernote Tagging Will Increase Your Productivity

evernote tagging

Let’s continue with the series of posts about Evernote as the number one productivity tools that can increase your productivity. Today I will talk about Evernote tagging and possibilities to increase your own productivity.

In previous posts in this series about this tool, we already talked about adding different stuff in Evernote, about possible ways how to organize that stuff to increase your productivity, about collaboration possibilities within the tool and about search functionality inside Evernote.

Today, I want to continue with the next important thing for productivity when it comes to Evernote. It’s tagging functionality that will enable you easily to find different stuff in your different notebooks.

I have already talked about tagging in the post about organizing stuff in Evernote.

Although Tagging Is Productive, It Can Cause Many Problems In The Future

The biggest problem which I met using Evernote in the early days is tagging. The problem comes because I use a tag as something that first comes to my mind, without any strategy or standard that I can use when I tag notes. For example, I’ve used tag improvement and tag improvements. That opens me many troubles when I want to find something because for the same purpose I have notes tagged with different tags.

The best thing that you can make before starting using Evernote is to decide about different standards that you will use when you are tagging notes. Even this will ask for additional time, it can be a very big time saver for you in the future.

Tags aren’t elements that you can simply set and forget. You need to manage, update and continuously improve your tags. You can’t decide about every possible tag that you will use in the future because you don’t know what you will put in your Evernote account as notes in advance.

Evernote Tagging: Try to Standardize as Possible as You Can

Here are some pieces of advice that you need to think and standardize before you start using tags.

  • Think and decide about specific standards that you will include in your tags as plural or singular words, or something else that will define tags right usage.
  • Think and decide about the tag context. What will they mean as additional description of your notes? It is normal for your tags to define the broader subject of your notes. But, sometimes that subject will define the place, sometimes tool, sometimes activity…
  • Do you want to use and how you will use additional marks attached to different tags? For example, you can use different symbols that will be a part of your tag and will give you the additional meaning of a specific tag. This is useful if you want to control which of your tags will appear at the top of your list of tags. For example, if you put a number “1” before the tag, it will be shown before tag marked with number 2.

Evernote Tagging: Manage Your Tags

As I mentioned earlier, you will need to manage your tags. This means to update them, improve them and organize them in some order best suitable for you.

Here are some pieces of advice about managing your tags:

  • Every time when you have a problem while you are trying to find something in Evernote ask yourself why that’s happened. Sometimes you will need to change some of your tags because you create them as you create your notes. Sometimes you will simply forget that you already have something about the subject.
  • Schedule some time to check all of your tags. It is a good habit of checking and reviewing your tags from time to time. So, you will ensure that everything is in the best fit for you. They exist for you, and you will need to be satisfied with them.
  • Organize your tags in some hierarchy if you find that it will help you to find more quickly something in your notebooks. For example, I use a “to do” tag with three child tags at work, home, and my son. This can be made simply dragging one tag that you want to be child tag in the parent tag.