My ADHD Brain: Semi-Paperless Filing - Part 2 with Evernote, Scannable & Pocket

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'm going to share the second part of my policies and methods for semi-paperless filing.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.  

In the first video on paperless filing, I talked through my policies for recycling paper and which files I physically keep.  I also shared that Evernote is my main service for paperless filing and that there are three cool tools that I use in conjunction with Evernote.  The first was the built in photo attaching tool.  The second is . . .

• Scannable app - Okay -- if the document that I want to save electronically is longer, like say 5 pages long, I will usually save that as a PDF using Scannable.  I love this app that was created to work beautifully with Evernote.  You don't even need to snap the picture, just hover over the document and Scannable will do it for you.   It takes no time (less than waiting for a scanner to feed the document) and you have a PDF to attach to your note.  Hover, then hover, then hover, then hover, you get the idea.  Once you finish, you can reorder the pages, change the name and choose between saving it as separate images or as a PDF.  Then when you hit Save, it actually saves it to a note in Evernote directly.  Watch -- let's go into Evernote and see.  Here it is.  If Auto scan is giving you fits, you can hit the 3 dots for more options and change it to Manual mode.  You can also change the default Evernote notebook the Scans are saved to.  You can see why I haven't replaced my scanner.  The scans are nice and readable, it's fast, and I don't have to shell out $150 or. more for another piece of equipment.  My third tool that i use along with Evernote is . . . 
• Pocket to strip formatting - Two things about stuff that I want to save from the Internet.  If the document is long, like a manual for an appliance, instead of saving the whole document, I will just save a link to it, so that I can get back to it later.  Also, if I want to save online things like articles or webpages or recipes, I find that if I send them directly to Evernote, or I copy and paste directly, I get a lot of problematic formatting.  My solution is to use Pocket.  Pocket is a service and app for collecting Internet articles to read later.  I'll show you what I mean.  Let's say I tried to copy and paste this recipe into an Evernote note.  I select a chunk of it and copy.  Then go into Evernote, create a new note and paste.  Not bad, but I have a bunch of this stuff that I want to get rid of -- well that is the problem -- you soon find that getting rid of strange formatting is not that easy in Evernote.  See?  It's better to start the note without it at all.  So here is what I do instead.  First of all, you have to make sure that you have Pocket installed.  Now go into your recipe and choose to share.  Pocket comes up as one of the apps for sharing.  Choose that and it will confirm that it saved the article to Pocket.  Now go into Pocket -- it might take a couple of seconds --  but here is my recipe nice and clean.  Now from here, choose the sharing button and you can see it already plays nicely with Evernote.  Choose Evernote and it gives you and interface to change the Notebook, title and even tags.  Choose Send to Evernote and it's done!  Now check Evernote and you can see that the recipe is there, stripped of formatting.  Photos and text are easy to delete or move.

Google Drive for larger files

The other place I store paper electronically is Google Drive.  The reason I would put something in Google Drive is that I have more space there, so if a PDF is too large, I may choose to stick it in Google Drive instead.  In addition, if I'm scanning chapters of a textbook, for example, I prefer to put that in Google Drive since I find it easier to use as a table of contents within a folder.  In those cases, I also put a note into Evernote with a link to the folder or file in Google Drive as a cross reference since Evernote is always the first place that I look.  Let me show you how to save stuff to Google Drive from the Scannable app.  Here's my document in Scannable, now instead of saving it, I'm going fo choose to Send it.  Now I have the option to Email it or Share it.  I will choose Share and then Add to iCloud Drive.  Now from the Google Drive app, I hit the plus sign to add a document. Then Upload, then iCloud Drive and there is my document to add.  Done!

I also use Google Photos to store Kids Crafts, memorabilia, and printed photos.  Look for my separate video on this in my Organizing and Accessing photos series.  

So that is it. I'm not over the top obsessive about getting things into digital format, but the bulk of what I need to access is always at my fingertips in Evernote or Google Drive.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you handle this below.  And thanks for watching!