In the last several months I have begun a new job, a Medical Director position, and with that, a certain amount of paperwork has come my way. Inevitably, people will stop by, mention things that require attention, which quickly slip you mind if you do not tackle it right away. In the past I have made liberal use of stick notes. You can probably imagine the picture, a desk with lots of notes in various stages of organizational clutter. Without fail, the important note filters to the bottom, is forgotten and your are in a crunch trying to get things done that have literally slipped you mind. If we add a bit of complexity to this, say an office at work, home, and the hospital, and then you can see how the layers of confusion and forgetfulness will multiply.
So, I have been working to find a way to make all of this electronic so that I can have one way to round up the notes and ideas into a central location that would be easily accessible from any place, via any device. I wanted to get away from the stick notes, and I am not really keen on typing everything into my calendar every time something comes up, especially when some of it comes up in the middle of meetings, or passing in the hallway. My research led me to a few solutions that I want to share.
Google: In running my calendar off of Google, I am able to synchronize the office, BlackBerry, and home laptop without too much difficulty. If also allows folks who share my calendar to look and see where I am and what I am doing at a given time (excellent for sharing schedules at home). The use of Google Documents has allowed me to post up the common documents for our medical group, and grant everyone access to those documents. I am posting my PowerPoint there and the use of Google Bookmarks means that I have my bookmarks on any computer I run across. In sharing these Bookmarks with others, we can build a common library of on-line resources that the group finds useful.
Evernote: This is my permanent repository for documents. Even with Google, I find that I use Evernote for backup of documents, and it allows me to tag the documents so that they are searchable. I can also upload audio files, photos, scanned documents and tag them as well. The documents are searchable within the text (if they are PDF or word processor documents). The photos are searchable, and the program allows me to clip web pages for later use. It is accessible form any of my platforms (phone, laptops, office computer) and it was free. I upgraded to premium in order to be able to search through PDF documents as well. I do not think I have even begun to crack the coolness of Evernote, but I am working on it hard.
reQall: This is the last tool that I am using to stay a bit more organized. I like this because it is my quick generating To Do list. I can speak into my BlackBerry and it turns into a quick To-do item, or if I give it a time, then it becomes an appointment. It synchronizes with my Google calendar, and so it synchronizes with everything. I can remember something I need someone else to do, put in a quick note, and off it goes to their e-mail so they have been reminded. It works with Evernote, pulling in related items to the topic of the note. So, if I have documents related to a meeting sitting in Evernote, and the meeting topic as a reminder in reQall, then they automatically relate them to each other. It is pretty cool
So, why am I writing about all of this? It is from the viewpoint of an epiphany I had the other day with a patient. This patient has had a head injury, has significant memory problem, and these problems have created a lot of trouble for them. For those of you who are involved with the military, I know that you are seeing a lot of post IED exposed soldiers, and memory problems are HUGE in that group. So, this head injury patient is having trouble remembering to do things. The pocket spiral notebook is being used, and it has helped, but the notebook does not remind anyone when an appointment is due. So, since Evernote, Google, and reQall are all free, we downloaded them in the office to give a try at a different way or staying organized. So far, so good. Fewer missed appointments, bills, groceries etc. I know that the use of these applications has freed up some space in my brain, and it appears useful for others.
My question to you…..what are you doing to remember, and how do you accomplish it?
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