Hello everybody, this is Scott Bradley from the website scottbradley.name. And in this video
I'm going go over one of the notebooks that I've set up within Evernote to manage a lot of my
ideas and as a busy professional entrepreneur this going to really sit well with you because
you're going to see the value in creating something like this going forward.
So, as you know in my first previous video, when I went over the 11 features that made
Evernote so awesome. This is the next video that I recommend that you watch. So, if you're
watching it now, great. If you haven't' watched that first video, be sure to go and watch that
first so this will make more sense to you.
So, going into the application, I've basically set up the one notebook in the various pieces of
the puzzle that need to be setup. In that notebook that I typically have created within my
Evernote is called "The Brain Dump Notebook."
So, basically, the reason why it's titled The Brain Dump Notebook is because as a busy
professional or an entrepreneur, I'm sure throughout the day, whether you're in the shower,
whether you're driving a car, whether you're just sitting doing nothing and you're just having
your ideas flow within your mind, you get a lot of great ideas.
Now, there's a possibility that a lot of those ideas that you get in the moments, you may not
want to implement them at that given time, but, you still want to have a place to put them in a
strategic way to be able to access later, at a later date, when you think to yourself, "Oh, I know I
wrote that down," or "I know I had that idea," or "I want to flesh that idea out better."
I'm going to give you a framework within Evernote that I use for my personal self to just be
more effective in managing the idea flow and idea creation. And, I can tell you that in doing
this and setting it up this way within Evernote with one of these notebooks, it really allows you
to keep your mind clear and open to opportunity rather than trying to keep and manage the
millions of ideas that you get everyday.
It just kind of gets clogged up. So, this is a really great way to put everything down on paper,
and, or digital paper, if you will, to manage all of this stuff, and have it organized in a way to
access later, in an easy way.
So, as you can see here the way The Brain Dump notebook is set up and as you saw in our first
video, you have the notebooks, you have the notes within the notebooks and you have the
content within each note.
The best way to set this up is, again, go to your Evernote and type setup Brain Dump Notebook
and if you watched the previous video, you already know how to do that. So, the best way to do
it, that I've found that's worked best for me is say for instance like on April 5th, I had ideas that
I wanted to share.
So, let's say that, I create the April 5th note, "Brain Dump Ideas for April 5th, you know, xyz
website do xyz whatever is model, model make it look this way with this marketing funnel and
sales message." I apologize for my spelling here.
So, I would click done, and that would be my brain dump for the day.
Now, the best thing about this is you can come back to this and add to it, or you can let it go
and whatever.
So, now as you'll see, say that yesterday was April 8th, today's April 9th, you go, "oh, okay, I
was in the shower and I just have a new brain dump, whatever, I want to create a new note.
We're going to title it the day that the brain dump happened. So, that's going to be April 9th,
So, that's going to be April 9th, 2012.
And you're going to put in your brain dump, oh, I had this idea about a book I wanted to write
or website I wanted to create, or blog post that I had. And I wanted to put it somewhere so I
didn't forget it, so I can reference it later. You know, you create it, you press done, and that
day your brain dump happens.
Now, I realize, you may not have a brain dump that comes in every single day. I know for me
my ideas come in waves where it's very strong in a small period of time and then it kind like
wanes off depending on what I'm implementing and what I'm creating.
But, this has really given me a great platform to put my ideas down as they come to me and
know that everything that I've ever come up with from a business perspective, or any life
thoughts or certain things. It's all here for me to access.
Now, one of the keys that you want to make sure that you do when you are creating your brain
dump is tag it strategically. So, on top of not only putting your brain dumps down, the best
thing you can do is also tag them strategically.
So, as you can see here in the left hand column, I have in my personal Evernote four specific
tags that help me tag my brain dumps. So, as you can imagine, as you go day by day, or week
by week or month by month, however way that your ideas start flowing in.
You're going to have hundreds, if not thousands, of notes here and you know, there's going to
be times when you're like, I know I've written a lot of ideas down, but I'm not sure which one I
want to pursue yet.
But, so, you come back to your Evernote and you say, okay, I only want to see the notebooks,
the notes that I've written with ideas that I want to pursue in the future.
So, the best thing that you could do is when you first setup these four tags within your
Evernote. And, you come in here and you put brain dump, and as you can see it has the little
thing down. And, let's say this was an idea to pursue in the future. You click done, and there it
You click done, and there it is.
And you're all set, it has the tag there all setup and again, this should be review if you watched
that first video, so if you haven't already done so, please go watch that first video going over
the 11 features that make Evernote so awesome.
So, you have this, then maybe you're going to create a new note and it's probably going to be
on April 11th, 2012. And you're going to do this.
Now, also, one other thing to consider is that you could also put more than one idea within each
note, in a brain dump. And, the reason why I did the dates in reverse chronological order is
because it shows the timetable of when you got certain ideas.
So, while your brain dump notebook could be a series of independent notes, I've found it to be
more organized by knowing, oh, okay, how recent did I come up with that idea or how late did I
come up with that idea.
So, just making it the title of the note is much more effective for me because it just works. But
really, it's up to you. I recommend the date, but if you want something different. You can
model and take from this that what you want.
You know, you come up, April 10th, 11th, boom, done. There you go. Keep it going, keep it
Keep it going, keep it flowing.
And the best thing is, say you only want to see the ideas to pursue and image you have 300 or
400 here for the each 300, 400 days that you had ideas that you wanted to throw down.
Again, you just come up here, click the actual notebook, and then click ideas to pursue. And
there you go. It only pulls up.
So, imagine long term you have a hundred or so notes, you have like, April, March, January,
December of all ideas that you wanted to pursue sometime in the future.
So, if you can imagine, this is more than just an idea dumping ground, but it's also a hmmm, I
know I've put a lot of content down around specific words or specific types of things, but I want
to see what are the specific notes that I've put down in my brain dump notebook about future
things to pursue.
So, create a tag, brain dump and that's why, because I will have certain other tags in the other
videos so I always set up my tags strategically this way so I know which tags are associated
with what notebook. It's just more organized that way and you'll find that it's more organized
for you when you use it that way.
So, the other tags that I would recommend that you create, you know, business thoughts, certain
times I get certain things, oh, I have this traffic thing I want to put a note in just a dump of
certain ways to drive traffic through a blog post or something like that, or certain ways to drive
traffic to a website.
You know, business thoughts, anything, anything related to business that I want to just dump; I
will put it in there.
Again, you have your ideas to pursue, which has kind of been the focus of this video for the
most part. Kind of showing how that works.
For me also, I also get sometimes life thoughts, like whether it's personal growth stuff or things
that I see in life that I want to make a connection to business but it's, kind of goes hand in hand
with business and life. That's something that I also do.
And then the last thing is Brain Dump Project title. So, say for instance that, one of your
companies, you have maybe multiple companies, or you have one company, whatever it is.
You would have brain dump and then your company name.
So, like, say, for instance, you get up in the morning, you're taking your shower and you get
this like insight and idea about your company that you want to implement, and you want to just
come into your Evernote create a new note, brain dump it out. You could tag it as your
company dump. So, Brain Dump - Company.
So, as you can see this is really valuable from a notebook standpoint because you will have one
place to put all of your ideas that you get about business, about life, about your projects, about
certain things that you may want to pursue or what not and put certain things in each note. And
it just really allows you to organize it in a strategic way.
Also, what I recommend too, is that when you have separate ideas within each day, say that, in
this day I had two ideas. The best thing that you can do is, press this little thing and it actually
creates a line, so, two separate ideas within this notebook. That's a great feature.
And then also, if you have any other attachments about the idea, that you've found that may
create inspiration for you. You can also use this attachment thing as well and upload
attachments into it.
So, I hope you really enjoyed that video about the Brain Dump Notebook and I hope that you go
to Evernote after watching this and setting up for yourself as you've seen the value and how it
will just make you life so much easier to manage, where as, you can go throughout your day
knowing that your ideas are safe.
They're easy accessible going forward and in the later parts of how your life goes, and it may
spawn new ideas, that new stuff that you're going to do in the future.
So, hopefully you enjoyed this video and again there's going to be more great videos within
this YouTube channel, so if you haven't already done so, please subscribe and also leave your
comments in the comment section below with how you felt about this video and how you plan
on possibly using it.
So, other than that, I will see you in the next video and I hope you have a great rest of the day.
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