Photo by Sarah Dorweiler on Unsplash

I’ve discussed how the way I organize Evernote has evolved recently. One of those more recent additions is that I’ve started creating notebooks for active projects, but I hadn’t come to a decision on what to do with them once they were no longer active.

Having just returned from Ireland, making my “Trip to Ireland” project inactive, I had a decision to make. That decision was that notes from inactive projects would get tagged and collapsed into their respective Reference notebook. In the case of my “Trip to Ireland” notes, I tagged them all with Ireland and moved them to my Personal reference notebook. They’re all still easily accessible in case I get the opportunity to go to Ireland again or someone asks about it, but otherwise out of the way.

Interestingly enough, shortly after I made my decision, Stacey Harmon came out with a post suggesting that very same thing:

Collapsing or archiving notebooks. If you’re regularly managing your notebooks (see above), you can use tags to convert your Notebooks to tags when you’re no longer using them. Simply tag all the data in that Notebook, and put it into an Archive notebook.

Her post is a great read if you’re having trouble with deciding how to organize Evernote. While I don’t follow her method, I do agree with her on why tags shouldn’t be your primary way of organizing Evernote. That being said, what I find most interesting about the Evernote community though, is how quickly and adamantly the user base divided into two camps: using tags is the only way to go or using notebooks is the only way to go.

My system has developed from a mix of ideas from GTD, Tiago Forte, and Stacey Harmon. New items go to the inbox (GTD) where they’re then filed away in their appropriate notebooks based on how often I’ll need to be using them (Forte and Harmon). Tags are used to identify overarching themes or topics (e.g. Buddhism, Ireland, accessibility, quantified self, etc.) allowing me to browse by topic if need be, but Evernote’s search is always my first instinct. It works without all the fiddly effort of managing a complex tagging system.