I love finding new toys tools to make my life simpler and more efficient. I have been blogging a whole lot more recently than ever before, writing on at least one of my blogs everyday. However, there are things that I would like to write about that are too new or too private to be published right away, either because of my own closeness to the situation, not enough data or because of privacy concerns.
So, I had the idea to keep a private journal where I could take notes on what is going on… my thoughts, emotions, notes, etc. and have them easily accessible to me to use for a blog post sometime in the future.
Evernote is a fantastic tool for all kinds of note taking and I use it everyday (more on in another post), but it’s not really setup well to work as a journal, or at least it doesn’t seem so to me. So I started looking for other online journal programs. Why online? So that I can have access to it via my home computer, phone or tablet.
Penultimate is a great tool for handwritten notes, drawings, etc. that can be synchronized with your Evernote account… but I can only use it on the tablet and need to have a stylus available to hand-write.
Ultimately, I ended up with a compromise solution. I started a private blog at WordPress.com, then used IFTTT.com (if this then that) to create a “recipe” so that each time a post is made on my personal blog, a note is appended in Evernote. I’m also toying with having a “recipe” for Instagram so that when I post a photo on Instagram, it creates a blog post on my personal blog.
This will give me the best of all words… open platform to write privately on personal topics, linked to Evernote so that I can search the text, or by tags, categories, etc. I can also access the blog via my desktop computer, phone, tablet, or any device with internet access.
What tools do you use for your own writing or personal productivity?
25 April 2013 Update: I’m having a little trouble with the IFTTT.com recipe for getting personal blog posts added to my Evernote account… it could be that it won’t work on private blogs, only on blogs that are publicly posted (that would actually make sense). So, I guess I have to rethink this… maybe I can find a way to use Evernote for the kind of Journal I want to keep…