One of the most effective things you can do with apps like Evernote, nvALT, Flow, Asana, and others is to invest in the use of tags. By using tags, you are creating easily searchable identifiers for your notes, tasks, and/or projects so that you can access them whenever you want quickly and easily.
That’s why it’s key to make sure that when you’re using tags that you keep them as universal as possible across all of your apps. (If you’re using OmniFocus, which uses contexts instead of tags, then you can apply those contexts as tags in the other apps you’re using.)
For example, if you’re using Flow as your task manager of choice and Evernote to store notes for those tasks and projects, then it’s a good idea to use similarly-named identifiers across both. I’ll use “Writing” as a tag in Flow and if I’m compiling research for written work in Evernote, then I’ll be sure to tag those notes as “Writing”, but as mentioned in my tagging strategy on Evernote, I’ll tack the letter “v” onto the end of it.
You can only keep track of so many things in your head. Since your task manager and capture tools helps out with a lot of that, all that is left is knowing what to look for within your task manager and capture tools. The benefit of universal tags is that you don’t need to know nearly as much, which is just enough to get you to where you need to be so that you can get doing what you need — or want — to do.
