My Note Naming Convention plus leaving shared notes & notebooks

Newsletter Housekeeping: Latest Evernote version for PC & Mac is 10.104.3. Grab it from the download page. Mobile should be 10.104.1.

Can I quickly thank Enrique and Anonymous Person for supporting TTT over the last week. It's much appreciated. If you have it in your pocket to support my efforts you can tip me a coffee here.

I've never been one to be able to use someone else's organisation system. I've tried GTD, PARA and a bunch of other acronyms and they just haven't worked, ever.

I have found continuously developing my own system based on my own needs works much better. My system works for me and the way I think and its always under revision. I've spoken before about how I revisit my systems twice a year.

One big part of my ‘system’ is my note naming convention. I'm pretty strict with this.

A naming convention is a structured way to name your notes so they are easier to find.

My naming convention works on a “Who, What, When” basis, for example:

"Green Flag Breakdown Cover Policy December 2023"

The Who is Green Flag. The What is Breakdown Cover Policy. The When is December 2023.

Let's break things down.

The Who

The 'who' part of my naming convention tends to be a company, organisation, person or thing and I make this absolutely obvious as to what it is.

"Lenovo Laptop"

"Evernote"

"Bob Bobson"

"Oak House"

"Clare"

The 'who' could be one of my kids names, or the name of the dog. Its who the note relates to.

The What

This part of the note name is what the contents of the note are about. Again, I try and make this simple and obvious so it can be found quickly in the future.

"Lenovo Laptop Receipt"

"Evernote Invoice"

"Bob Bobson Prescription"

"Oak House Council Tax Bill"

"Clare Marketing Meeting"

You can see how the note title is being built up.

The When

The final part is usually a date and I stick to the format of Month and Year.

"Lenovo Laptop Receipt June 2019"

"Evernote Invoice July 2023"

"Bob Bobson Prescription March 2022"

"Oak House Council Tax Bill April 2024"

"Clare Marketing Meeting August 2024"

I always write my months in full as well, no abbreviations. The main reason is that I have a fixed way of doing it which makes it easier to search for notes in the future.

This naming convention covers around 95% of my notes but there are always exceptions.

• My music collection catalogue is named "Artist Name - Album Name".

• All the articles I write for Taming the Trunk have the name of the article as the note title.

Sticking to a naming convention will help you find things quicker and easier.

I can run searches like:

Bob Prescription - to bring all of them up.

Clare Meeting - to see all meetings.

Oak House Council Tax Bill - will bring all the bills up.

Council Tax 2024 - will just bring up this bill.

This system does mean I need collection notebooks where I can process all my notes. I use ‘.Index’ and ‘Receipts Dump’ notebooks. Pretty much everything gets dumped in there.

I've been using this type of naming convention for years and it works really well for me. It’s kind of a habit now so my workflow tends to be to throw things into my collection notebook and then when I review the notes, I name them in this way and move them to the correct notebook.

Do you use a naming convention? How do you name your notes? Let me know in the comments.

Leaving Evernote shared notes and notebooks

I had a company go bust on me in 2019 and they left behind a bunch of shared notes and a notebook.

I couldn’t get the company to un-share them as they had disappeared and I couldn't remove them myself as they had been shared to me. They’ve been lurking since 2017!

Now we have a solution.

This is HUGE!

Grab the latest version of the desktop apps from the Evernote website and a new menu entry appears when you right click a shared note.

The same goes for a shared notebook but search for it in the main notebook view then right click it.

Folks have been asking for this for about 100 years so it’s great to see it finally get implemented.

I've managed to get my shared notes and notebooks tidied up a little.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon