Here you get the full timeline for Stacey Harmon's path to Evernote addiction [what Evernote fan doesn't love to share their history with the platform?] and how GTD plays into her story.

Getting Started with Evernote

Stacey first heard about this note-taking app called Evernote in 2009 from several of her fellow speakers at real estate marketing and technology conferences as they presented "the top 10 apps transforming your business". Thinking Evernote sounded interesting, she downloaded it to her phone, used it once or twice, then set it aside until the next conference, when she would hear about it again and again from the stage, and give it another try.

An avid list maker all her life, Stacey realized she could use Evernote to centralize her shopping list in the cloud, access it from any device, and get rid of paper checklists. This was a good first use case and gave her a positive experience with the app. But, as is a common story for many Evernote users, she didn't use it for much more than a centralized errand list for over a year, and wasn't hooked on Evernote right away.

Getting Hooked on Evernote

Several of her speaker colleagues clearly loved Evernote, and Stacey wondered what she was missing. A twitter conversation in 2010 led to a small Google Hangout led by Evernote early adopter Gahlord Dewald who gave a handful of users from the real estate scene - of which Stacey was one - some tips on how uses Evernote and helped to illustrate its power to the group. That session led to Stacey understanding the concept of the default notebook, and the value in changing her default notebook name to ".In Box". Suddenly, the system had a logical organization to it and her use of Evernote started to grow. 

Additional light-bulb moments with Evernote occurred as a result of reading Dean Oulette's book Evernote for Real Estate. Learning about note-linking transformed Stacey's ideas about what she could do with Evernote and gave her an essential tool for creating detailed structure in her Evernote account. She upgraded to Evernote Premium and started moving all kinds of documents into her account so she could benefit from the premium search capabilities Evernote offered. 

Evernote and GTD

In 2012, Stacey was seeking a solution to the overwhelm she was experiencing as an self employed entrepreneur. A friend recommended she stop everything and read Getting Things Done by David Allen, which she did. Always an organized person, the Getting Things Done [GTD] philosophy clicked immediately for Stacey. She saw how Evernote could become her trusted system for managing absolutely everything, and from that moment forward, she went all in with Evernote.

Stacey took to her whiteboard and mapped out how to organize notes, notebooks, stacks and tags in Evernote to support a scalable GTD deployment. 

She then built the structure in her Evernote account, and started scanning and digitizing anything in her office that she could. It was the beginning of the end of paper documentation in her world. 

In October 2012, Stacey was selected to be Evernote's GTD Ambassador which led to one of her favorite professional highlights. In 2012 she got to personally show her Evernote GTD system to the David Allen who confirmed at the end of their meeting that Stacey's system was indeed a good representation of the GTD methodology in digital form.

13,000+ notes later, GTD is still her guiding productivity philosophy and Evernote is her productivity tool. Her system allows her to live the promise of paperless, work from anywhere, and provides her the sense of mental peace and the stress free productivity she was seeking. It also allowed her to grow her business.

Evernote for Business

One significant impact of Stacey's Evernote-centric system was that it enabled her to work from anywhere. It didn't matter where she was, her office was always with her and she had instant access to client files whenever she needed them. Her client base expanded in geography and many were interested in learning how they could use Evernote work in a similar way.

In 2013, Evernote launched Evernote Business and Stacey became one of the early users. Evernote Business became the lynchpin software of Harmon Enterprises productivity. Stacey knew how dramatically Evernote improved both her personal and business workflows and decided to write a book showing other entrepreneurs how Evernote can be deployed to help them. In March 2014, she and her co-author Kristi Willis released Untethered with Evernote: Tips and Workflows for Independent Entrepreneurs.

When Evernote developed their Evernote Business Certified Consultants program, Stacey was asked to participate in the inaugural class and was announced as one of the first Evernote Business Certified Consultants in April 2014. As her visibility within the Evernote community grew and the Evernote user base grew, the inquiries for her Evernote workflow knowledge and training skills also climbed.

In late 2014, Stacey paired her passion for Evernote productivity with the business inquiries she was receiving, and pivoted Harmon Enterprises to be an Evernote focused consultancy, focusing on helping businesses of all sizes to move forward with Evernote. 

If you are interested in how Stacey can help you with Evernote for your business, or deploy her GTD system to aid in your personal productivity, send us a message.