I have always envied people who could simply remember everything. I think each of us knows someone like that from a circle of friends. I’ve always wondered, how do they manage to remember everything just for an exam? There have always been those few who were born with such a talent. And for everyone else (myself included), we just have to work harder to memorize something. Be it studying for an exam, preparing for a presentation, the next job interview, or an important meeting coming up.

The great thing in today’s century is that there are numerous tools that can help you retain important things, set reminders, and make life a little more orderly. So I’d like to show you a way to really remember everything in the future, so you can not only be more productive but also refer to what you’ve captured.

Access your notes from your Kindle

If there’s one tech item I don’t want to miss today it’s my Kindle. Not only do I read a lot more books through my Kindle. It also makes it easier for me to highlight important passages that I want to capture. The great thing about a Kindle is that I can access my notes relatively easily.

For this purpose, Amazon has set up a website that can be accessed via read.amazon.com/notebook. Through the website, you can access all the notes you’ve made on your Kindle at any time. You don’t even need the physical Kindle. This is also possible with the Kindle app for iOS or Android.

If I really like a physical book, I always buy the Kindle version as well.

Memorize everything with Evernote

Now we come to the essential, how I note everything important for the future and thereby really remember everything. 

Evernote is note-taking software that lets you create and organize digital notes and syncs them across all your devices. So you can use Evernote as a digital filing cabinet to organize all your notes, whether it’s recipes, strategic plans for work, or a daily diary.

Evernote is available for a mobile device but also for the desktop or as a web browser version.

How to remember really everything with Evernote

With Evernote, you make your life a lot easier. In principle, you can upload everything to Evernote and thus refer back to it at any time. Important here is that you also configure it correctly to organize all your notes.

You can create notebooks and give them a name. If you have created a notebook, you can create a stack from it, so that you can create more notebooks over this stack (the parent folder) to give individual terms to find them easier.

In the screenshot below, I show how I set it up for me to keep something tidy like this.

In the above screenshot, you can see that I have on one hand the top term “Book notes”, in this case, a stack, and below that are my notebooks which I named after the titles of the books I read. This makes it easier to find what I’m looking for quickly afterward.

Recommendation: Why you should change your mindset

Evernote Web Clipper

The magic of it all and making all the above work well is the Evernote Web Clipper. Evernote Web Clipper is a tool to capture content from the web and sync it with Evernote. Evernote Web Clipper needs to be downloaded separately as a web browser extension.

With the Evernote Web Clipper, I can directly open the corresponding book with my notes via read.amazon.com/notebook, start the Web Clipper, select it as “article” and directly create it as a corresponding notebook and save it to Evernote, as shown in the screenshot below.

You can use the same for anything else interesting from the web. Be it interesting blog articles you want to save for eternity, cooking recipes you want to try out, or interesting wiki pages you want to refer back to. With Evernote Web Clipper you can save anything from the web to your Evernote account, categorize it and refer back to it on all your devices.

How do I save notes I took from a lecture or meeting?

When I am in a meeting I like to have as little as possible with me. I tend to take notes in a meeting on my iPhone via Apple’s Notes app and jot down bullet points. Often enough, though, I just take a notebook with me and write down bullet points with a pencil.

I then put these into Evernote after a meeting and write them down in a notebook. This is very time-consuming. Believe me, though, it is worth every minute of effort. There is of course the option to photograph the written via the Evernote app for the mobile device to the note and save it as a notebook. It doesn’t have the same effect for me though, as it can sometimes be tedious to recognize what has been written, let alone find the text again afterward via the search function. But everyone has to know this for himself.

Tags that help you to remember everything

One of the most important features, if not the most important feature for me, to find things on Evernote is tags. With Evernote, you have the ability to create tags. You can even create sub tags. With the search function, you can search directly for the tags and find directly what you are looking for. Tags have to be used skillfully so that you don’t lose the overview.

Create tags for ideas, important quotes from a meeting, productivity, books by authors, and so on. Believe me, it can make your life a lot easier.

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So how do I build the system for myself? Below I have created a step-by-step guide to build the system and really remember everything in the future.

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Create an Evernote account

First of all, before you can start, you need to create an Evernote account. You can do this easily and for free at https://evernote.com. After creating an account you can download the desktop application or use the web browser version.

2. Create a notebook

Once you have created an account, you are ready to go. You can create a notebook on the left menu column. In the notebook, you can write down everything that seems important to you, so that you can remember everything later.

3. Create a stack

Once you have created a notebook, you can create a stack by right-clicking on the notebook. The stack is like a parent folder where several subfolders are located, in this case, the notes. This makes it easier to find your notes afterward because you can categorize them better.

4. Merge notebooks in a stack

You can click on multiple notebooks. (Multiple selections by holding the CTRL key and clicking on the notebooks) and move them to a stack.

5. Download the Evernote Web Clipper

The most important tool to unleash the full power of Evernote is the web browser extension Evernote Web Clipper. You can download this from the link https://evernote.com/intl/en/features/webclipper. The Evernote Web Clipper allows you to capture everything from the web and sync it to all your devices via Evernote.

6. Create tags

Tags allow you to tag individual notes with terms so you can search for a tag directly later to find notes faster. Tags can be created by right-clicking on Tags in the right menu and selecting Create new tag.

Tip: If you want to tag more than one notebook, you can easily do this with the multi-selection and right-click “Edit Tag”.

7. Transfer your notes to Evernote

If you create notes with the Evernote Web Clipper you don’t have to worry. The note will be synced directly to your Evernote account. However, it is not too rare that you create notes via another app. You write something down in a Word document or you have something important to write down and you want to write it down directly in Evernote. This is no problem at all. With Evernote, you get a personal email address linked to your account. You can find the email address in Evernote under the account overview. 

Tip: Save the email address as a contact on your mobile phone. 

This way you can easily send notes, documents, photos, etc. as attachments to this email address, which syncs directly with Evernote. If you want to capture something quickly, you can also just take your email program, type away and send it directly to Evernote. It doesn’t even have to be sent as an attachment. The notes you send via email go directly to the General Notebook in Evernote.

Conclusion

Since using this system and making it my own, I am not only able to remember and record everything that seems important to me. It also gives me the ability to work more effectively and to refer back to important information from conversations where I have made a note. As a nice feature, it even makes me sound smarter.

I hope I could give you a helpful tip and inspired you with the system. Let me know in the comments if this system is helpful.

Recommendation: Timothy Ferriss – How he became a self-made millionaire

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Today’s Reading List:

21 Things I Wish I’d Known at 21