I recently took a real look at my Evernote repository. This is the application I have used for years for note taking. It works really well. It is a paid service. I think about $90/year but well worth it. It is encrypted and syncs across all my devices. In addition to making my own notes it also functions very well as a web clipper. I.e., when I come across something on the web that interests me, I can just click on the Evernote plugin for the browser and it saves it to Evernote.

Maybe it works too well. 😊. I have over 1300 notes in the repository. When will I ever get the time to look at them all? Let alone study and assimilate the contents. But I do use it for everything. Rolling To Do list, Daily Habit review, long term plans and projects, one day nice to do stuff, etc. Incredibly useful application.

That being said, I am doing exactly that. I’m going to devote some time every day to go through the repository and really look at what I have. I started a couple of days ago and without wishing to fall prey to self-aggrandizement, I really have a lot of very useful stuff in there. If I were able to implement even 1/10 of the gems of wisdom that I have accumulated, I would be in very good shape indeed. Mentally and physically. So, I am feeling that this is going to be a worthwhile exercise.

Without doubt, there are many, items that I can just delete. I am writing about this because I feel it’s necessary to apply the tenets of minimalism to digital repositories like this as well as to your physical life. There are differentiations between this and say, for example, emails and work documents etc. Those, I keep going back years and years. But they do not weigh on me psychologically. They are simply there as a reference. If I ever need to search for something in there, I know I can.

The Evernote repository, however, is something different. I knew in the back of my mind that all this stuff was there. I had saved these notes because they were items that I was genuinely interested in and wanted to follow up on one day. However, as that was why I saved them, they did weigh upon me, whether I knew it or not. In the back of my head was always the thought that “One day, Anthony, you have to go back through these and study it or implement it.”, whatever. And now that time is here.

Naturally there are only a certain number of things you can concentrate on every day, and there’s only a certain number of hours in the day that you can work. So how do I how do I look at this at these 1300 items and figure out which ones are good, which ones I want implement?

As I’ve gone through the various categories, it has been fairly obvious that many can be deleted right away.

·        Items that no longer apply

·        Items that are out of date

·        Items that I have already studied and either implemented or decided not to

·        Language items that I have already learned

Then, having done a number of quick passes to winnow out the dross, then I will go through the more valuable items and edit them for length of content, and consolidate which ones I really want to take a look at and refresh or implement.

So, all in all I would have to say that it is a good exercise, but like everything else being minimalist requires constant effort.

… Here it is – 8 days later. I am down to 795 notes. I have deleted ~400+ notes and merged quite a few as well. Plus, it has given me a chance to review a lot of valuable stuff and refresh it in my mind. And I’m not done yet. A work in progress.

Really worthwhile exercise and valuable application. I hemmed and hawed a while between this and Microsoft One Note some years ago but finally decided on this. And the company has really done a good job of updating and improving it.

This is tons better than having actual paper. You can search for words. You can easily update. I usually work this on my laptop but I have access on both phones and my iPad. And if you really need paper sometimes, print out the article you need.