Are Dropbox and Evernote the killer Apps?

In the quest for the Apps that really make me productive: these two are in the Pantheon

As somebody who is naturally disorganised, but intelligent enough to both realise it and appreciate the pitfalls of staying that way, I’ve always been interested in ways by which I can bring order to the chaos I otherwise create. Thus I have spent many years and destroyed countless brain cells searching for approaches that allow me to meet my specific needs:

1. Allow me to organise information in a way that is logical for me (as opposed to how others believe it to be)
2. Allow me to retrieve information regardless of where I might be at any specific moment in time
3. Secure the information so that nobody else can access it without my say-so
4. Protect the information so that my clumsiness doesn’t cause it’s accidental loss or destruction
5. Keep me appraised of what I need to do, and when.

Over the years I have tried all sorts of approaches using various apps and technologies.

• As a long time Lotus Notes fan, of course I developed Notes databases to capture the information.
• I tried various “productivity” tools on PCs and Macs (Life Balance was pretty good as a task manager, but limited to that when I used it).
• And of course there were the paper based systems (though of course they failed most criteria)

Now, however, I think I have the answer (for now anyway). For me, the combination of Evernote and Dropbox (plus their respective ecosystems of add-in products) have got me pretty close to Nirvana.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the core of my file-based digital memory. It is installed on all my devices (PC, MacBook, iPad, iPhone) and has in it just about everything that I might conceivably need in any arbitrary location. It’s security is good enough for all but the most confidential of information. In the couple of cases where I need greater security, I have used TrueCrypt to create secure disks as files in Dropbox. That way, the encrypted disks are secured and replicated using Dropbox.

Dropbox meets my need to have information stored securely off-site so that loss of a computer does not jeopardise the information, or my business! I can even access it through a browser if necessary.

If you wish to try out Dropbox, please consider using my affiliate link to sign up. I get no money, but I do get a bit more storage space as a result. You do as well. http://db.tt/Nf1deza

Evernote

How I managed to survive without Evernote, I shall never know. Put simply, it’s a set of free-form digital notebooks that exist across multiple devices (again) and in the Cloud. Add in the ability to tag notes, setup smart searches and store just about anything inside a note however; and you have a ubiquitous digital data store.

I use it to hold just about anything that is textual in nature (e.g. this blog post while it was being drafted). I email items into it, clip website pages, scan documents, photograph things, etc. It all goes into Evernote.

All my GTD task list is held in an Evernote notebook and I have separate notebooks for clients and projects: some of which I share with other collaborators who are also working on that project.

Add-ons.

More and more applications are starting to use Dropbox as their storage system: particularly on the iPad. iCloud is all well and good, but it’s tied into Apple and I don’t want to be locked in for such critical data. True, Evernote and Dropbox are also proprietary, but in their cases, these are the core of their business; rather than being a peripheral activity as iCloud is for Apple.

As an example, I use Freemind to create Mind Maps on the MacBook and PC. I then use iThoughtsHD to view and edit them on the iPad. Dropbox synchronises the maps so I am free to use the device that is best at the time.

So, what works for you?

This is my current state of play for personal productivity apps. I’m sure there are other ways of achieving the same set of objectives. How do you do it?

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