My notes feel heavy, static and important, not like small items in a database. I’ve found I came to rely on the fact that in Agenda things will not move around too much.
All this means that notes have a very static feel to them, they don’t feel like small virtual containers that could move around at any time and appear in many different places depending on a presentation choice too easy to change. In addition, Agenda by default sorts notes chronologically, and in overviews, notes appear according to the order of projects in the sidebar.
Showing the entirety of each note also means long notes necessarily take a lot of space on the screen, and become “heavy” – drag-n-dropping one is not a small thing. Instead of overwhelming, seeing all the notes, chronologically ordered, provides context – it becomes helpful. If instead everything in Agenda is something I’ve reflected about and typed myself, it becomes a journal of my thoughts, decisions and accomplishments. If I tried to store files or generic information in Agenda, seeing everything at the same time is overwhelming. For instance, in contrast with 100% of other note apps that always first present you with a list of note snippets, and only show you one complete note at a time, in Agenda a project presents you with every note in its entirety at the same time. The best place I had found to do this was in a plain paper notebook, but it has drawbacks – it’s hard to search for things, hard to resurface old ideas, and hard to link together things when they are separated by many pages.īy contrast, I found that many design choices in Agenda supported my use of the app as a place to reflect and plan. I’m not saying it is not possible to use Evernote or Todoist to plan or reflect, but it does not work for me. Planning in Todoist is not a good idea, as every planned item suddenly becomes something I have to do. In Todoist everything is an action item, and I found it did not provide me with the space I need to think about stuff. In Evernote my plans got lost within all my files, I had trouble relating my notes to each other as they were often far apart, getting a sense of what historically led to what decision was hard. I had tried to do it in both of my other apps, but it did not work. I had realized I had another need – something to help me reflect on things and think and plan the road ahead. But a few months ago I tried Agenda again, in a different way.
It was not as well suited as Evernote at storage and retrieval of files, it was not as well suited as Todoist as task tracking and management. Each time I tried to make it replace one of the other apps. In the past few years I’ve tried to use Agenda a few times. I trust that Todoist will not let me forget anything I don’t want to forget. My system helps me keep track of my deadlines and schedule, and lets me also queue up tasks that I can do whenever. In Todoist I have a moderately complex and manageable system involving several lists that I trained myself to review regularly. I trust that anything I put in Evernote, I can find again. Even with thousands of notes and files, everything remains fast and searchable. Since you can open and modify files right from the note itself, it becomes basically a kind of note-based file system. I’ve all but stopped putting files in folders, and instead I put everything in Evernote. I use Evernote to store anything I’m not actively working on and might need to reference later. I’ve been a heavy Evernote user for the past three or four years. In this long ramble I will try to explain how I ended up adding Agenda to the small list of applications I use every day.
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