Google Docs [Unofficially] Replaces Evernote
Tabs, Templates, Tags, and More!

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #564: Google Docs [Unofficially] Replaces Evernote → Tabs, Templates, Tags, and More!

Jeff Sanders
Four years after I officially announced I was done with Evernote, some of their best features have landed in one of the world's most popular word processing tools.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 564: Google Docs [Unofficially] Replaces Evernote → Tabs, Templates, Tags, and More!

Good morning and welcome to The 5 AM Miracle!

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful, lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer specializing in delivering high-energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

In the episode this week, I'll break down a quick review of what Evernote used to be and why I ultimately left it four years ago, why I now believe Google Docs can act as an Evernote replacement with a few caveats, and how I'm excited for the future of Google Docs as a document and organization powerhouse.

Let's dig in.

Around four years ago, way back in episode #368 here on this podcast, I broke down all the details as to why I finally left Evernote and had to painfully make the shift into other tools and apps to replace what used to be my absolute favorite tool for digital organization and taking notes and making things happen in my own personal and professional ways.

And so for the episode this week, what I'd like to do is to quickly rehash and revisit what Evernote used to be, at least as it was four years ago, why I ultimately left Evernote, and then we'll pivot into my new replacement.

And by new, I mean old, because I've discussed this before in this podcast with my various shifts away from Evernote to Dev & Think to Google Docs, and now doubling down on Google Docs because of a few new features that they have released that finally, finally allow me to confidently say that leaving Evernote four years ago was the right call.

Because for the last four years, I've questioned it.

For the last four years, I've basically assumed that what Evernote used to be, I would never see again, that no other app developer would create the equivalent of that moment in time when I had what I wanted to organize my life, personally and professionally.

So let's get to this conversation on what Evernote used to be.

From my perspective, Evernote was the best way to take notes with a digital device.

It provided me incredible flexibility, customization, power, organization, and searchability all into one device that gave me ultimately ease of access to a ton of data.

So there was a smooth solution to take and share notes, to tag and organize content, save websites and emails, integrate your notes into other applications, search a huge library of content, and customize the experience with a lot of preferences.

And so for me, it was a no-brainer.

Of course, I would use a tool that was this good, that allowed me this much flexibility and customization to organize my life and especially my notes and ideas as fast and as easily as I possibly could imagine.

And so four years ago, Evernote decided to make some radical changes to the way that their app functioned and basically destroyed my ability to move forward.

And since then, their company has gone through wild changes.

Lots of CEOs and board directors that have all quit and been fired and changed hands multiple times.

And the company is a hot mess.

The recent reviews of the app are terrible.

And so if I were to say, go back and try it again, that would be bad advice.

Don't.

Like Evernote is not a good solution.

It wasn't four years ago.

It's not today.

And so let's discuss with a little more detail why four years ago I left and which of those things are still true, which from what I can tell is all of this or almost all.

So four years ago, Evernote removed dozens of core functions that their primary power users depended on.

I can't break this down enough.

If you run a company, if you're an entrepreneur, business owner, or if you work for a company that serves customers, which is basically everyone, when you take away the core functionality of why your customers are your customers, you're not going to have customers anymore.

And this was a lesson that I don't know how Evernote didn't learn the first time or the second or the 10th, but they did not.

They removed the reason for me to stay.

And so I did not stay, which seems very obvious.

Well, let's go through the things that they removed that made me very frustrated.

Uh, they took away the preferences menu.

You could basically not customize anything.

There were no local notes.

So everything had to sink through the internet in order for it to work.

There were no classic note links, which is a really big deal back in the day.

There was no sync button, no tabs, no view options for the sidebar items, no default fonts, only a few colors.

The spell check was terrible.

You couldn't remove their little elephant logo in the menu bar.

There were a lot of clicks to view a website.

You couldn't copy and paste a note to the same notebook.

You could not sync between notes and your devices because it didn't show up.

There were no updates to be had.

You couldn't move your notes between shared folders.

Your notes wouldn't delete and they would reappear later on, which was crazy.

There was a very slow connection.

The app was buggy as it possibly could be.

And you couldn't select all your notes at once to move them around.

You could only do 50 at a time.

That's a pretty long list.

When you create, that's a lot of negative things to say about a company.

And honestly, I just stopped there.

There were more things that could have added to that list, but I got tired.

It was just a lot.

At the end of the day, what Evernote did was release a beta product as a regular update.

On top of the fact that they also removed audio notes, they broke formatting, they had check boxes that became Xs for some weird reason.

Technologically, what they were doing was moving to a system called Electron that allowed them to save money.

It was easier for their developers to create a single product that then dispersed all the apps at once, which makes sense.

I'm not opposed to that.

What I'm opposed to is removing core functionality for their primary users.

And so it was no longer a Mac native product.

And for a Mac user like myself, it was a big loss.

And so was it a long-term win for their company?

Well, four years after the fact, the answer is no.

It was terrible then, it's terrible now.

It was a massive short-term loss for them then, which just forced people like me to move on.

And yes, throughout this entire time, they had very difficult customer service and the company's future was just honestly a hot mess.

That's what it was.

It's what it is.

The fact that they're still in business is kind of shocking to me at this point.

And so having said all of that, I could go on, but I did that years ago.

What I want to focus on in the episode this week is where we're moving to, not what Evernote was, not what is possible technologically, but most importantly, how to leverage the tools that we have access to today that can give core functionality back to those of us who miss the better days of before.

And so four years ago, like I mentioned, I left Evernote and moved to a competitor called Devon Think and Devon Think at the time, I believe was a Mac only app.

I'm not sure what it is today, but it was not my favorite.

It was fine.

They got the job done, but it wasn't my favorite.

And so ultimately a couple of years into that, I left Devon Think and just did everything.

We're talking files, folders, all the bells and whistles to organize my life into Google docs, Google drive, Google sheets, all the Google products.

And at the time, I also moved to Google workspace, which is their paid service was called G suite before.

And it's their paid service for basically businesses to operate with.

Yes.

A professional level of Gmail for email service, as well as lots of online storage access for all of your files and folders.

So if you were to purchase Google workspace today as an individual user, I think it's around 12 or 13 us dollars per month.

So it's actually pretty affordable considering you get a lot for that, including some of these pro features I'm about to mention.

Now, some of these you can get now and just your regular Gmail account that's free.

And that's awesome.

But the best version of most products will always be the paid version.

So I'm not going to recommend the free version and stop there.

I would prefer that everybody get the paid version only because if you take your organization seriously, you take your productivity seriously.

You're going to need pro tools in certain areas.

Now, of course, not everyone's going to need a pro tool with Google, but I digress.

Okay.

So let's break down the core features here that I am super excited about that allows me to record the episode for you today, which is that a few months ago, Google did something that I did not think they would ever do, which is they introduced tabs.

Yay.

Tabs is the Evernote equivalent of having access to a single document that then has quick access to other documents that are baked into it.

It's hard for me to describe this just auditorily.

You should see this, Google this, there you go.

Look this up and see it for yourself.

What tabs provides is what you'd expect a core Google doc document, like a word document, essentially on the internet, on the internet, it's like a hundred years old.

And what you have there is this Google doc that then has the option on the left-hand side for tabs.

I'm using a Google doc right now for the script for the episode this week, always have and love this system.

But now I have access to tabs on the left-hand side, which is an absolute game changer.

This was released to all users, both free and paid just a few months ago.

And what I can now see on this left-hand tab side are options to add literally additional whole documents attached to the core document.

And you can have tabs with sub tabs.

You can rename them, duplicate them, link to them, move them around and rearrange them, consolidate entire folders of individual Google docs into a single document that has tabs.

This is the breakthrough.

Imagine a scenario where you have a digital organization system, you have a folder and let's say five or six different Google docs.

If all of those Google docs are very similar, you could combine them theoretically into a single doc with multiple tabs, which is what I've done almost across the entire board of my business.

I've gone through with contracts and agreements, proposals and quotes, health and fitness goals, you name it.

I have found ways to consolidate what were dozens of documents into just a few that have tabs.

It's amazing.

It's such an incredible way to have access to a lot of data in a single document and then quickly organize what would be a very long and complicated document into smaller sections that are easily accessible.

This is huge.

It's hard for me to describe how powerful this is because let's imagine this scenario.

We have a lot of stuff, a lot of physical stuff, digital stuff.

You know, those scenarios, you're just kind of overwhelmed by how much you see.

Well, now imagine a scenario where the exact same quantity is still there, but it's organized efficiently.

It's very easy to access what you need and ignore what you don't.

That's the goal.

And tabs makes that possible because you can now consolidate and yet still delineate the content in a way that before was not possible.

This can radically shift how you view what it is you're trying to organize and where things go and how they get, you know, combined together or separated apart, whatever the thing is you want to do, you now have so much more flexibility that you could not do before.

There is one possible issue that right now seems to be a bit of a hiccup for me, which is that you cannot search for the tab name in a Google Drive search.

So the name of the core document will show up, but the individual tabs will not.

Now the document itself will show up based on keywords in the document, but the title will not.

So there is a bit of a hiccup there in terms of being able to search for specific content.

And so if there's a document you definitely want to search for by name, that document should probably stand alone.

But if not, these things can be combined together in ways that are pretty fantastic.

So in a nutshell, that is tabs.

It is the feature I am most excited about.

Once again, it was just released recently for everyone.

So you have access to it now on a free account or a paid account and test it, try it out, look through all of your files and folders and figure out where consolidation like that makes sense.

Or as a good example, I have new projects that I work on and a Google doc is usually the core organizational starting point for that project.

And I'll just make some tabs of different ideas of different ways to organize what I'm working on next.

And so there's a very quick and easy way to just try it out.

Just make some new tabs, put in some content and just see what's possible.

It really is great.

Okay.

Feature number two that has been around for a while, but I'm just now discovering it.

So to me, it's brand new, which is templates.

Now templates essentially are documents that Google has pre-made for you, kind of like a resume template or a work proposal template.

You'll see these things mapped out.

There's dozens of them, maybe even a hundred that Google has available for everyone to use that are free.

And you can take their default templates and copy it into your account and then customize it for yourself, which is wonderful available to everybody free and paid.

Everyone has access to these tools and these default templates.

The fun part though, is the paid version of Google workspace gives you access to custom templates that you can submit for your company and have them be company wide in your account.

So if you're an admin of a Google workspace account, you have control over this to make new templates, make them available for all of your users or not.

This is fantastic for branded letterhead type content.

If you have a very specific document type to use, make it a template and then you just copy it very easily across the board.

I have done this now for all of my contracts, proposals, quotes, professional documents of all types.

They're all based into this template system now.

And so I can easily organize them and see them all in one place, easily update them, make changes to them, share them around as needed.

So the custom templates gives you a lot of flexibility to create these documents and then organize them into categories.

I'll be able to update them once again in a very easy way.

The one thing I see as a hiccup to this, besides the fact that it's only for paid users, is the organizational system is not what I would prefer.

I get very picky when it comes to how my stuff is visually displayed.

It's a very Google-esque system.

So you have to work with their choice there.

But for now, it really is a great system to create these custom templates, be able to easily duplicate them, customize them and make them your own.

And so if your intention is to run your company in a very effective way or your own personal account in a much more organized way with default standard templates, this is a great solution to that.

And the third big feature from Google Docs that I'm very excited about is tags or what they actually call classification labels or just labels for short.

Now in Evernote, tags were a big, big deal.

It really separated them for years as a tool and a searchability functionality to be able to set Evernote apart from all of its competitors.

You had tags built into everything and you could organize things in all kinds of fun ways.

And I honestly really, really miss Evernote tagging.

I didn't use it enough.

I know people who used it way more than I did.

And it was such a core organizational strategy to easily find all kinds of stuff and all the different ways beyond what folders provide.

And so Google now has their stab at this.

I don't think it's as robust as it could be.

And so hopefully in the future, it's even better than it is today, but they have a solution and they call it labels and labels from what I can tell are only for the paid users of Google workspace.

I'm rather unfortunate there, but they are very handy.

So the labels allow for great organization of content, once again, outside of traditional folders, and it basically steals Evernote's idea, but makes it a Google version.

You can have up to 150 different labels or tags for your company, and then assign these labels to as many documents as you want to, to organize those documents by type essentially.

And then you bookmark, this is what I've done recently.

You bookmark a search page, but then shows all the documents that are within a certain label.

So good example here, I have a lot of branded documents for my company with 5am Miracle Media, the name of my company.

And so I created probably a dozen different letterhead style branded documents, and I have labeled all of them with a very specific, you know, 5am brand label.

And then I have a bookmark in my browser to just open up and I see all the documents in one place, which essentially is a different way to find the same content as opposed to having just a traditional folder.

So I explained this to my wife, Tessa, and she asked, well, why not just put all of your branded documents into one folder by themselves?

Well, I could do that.

That's the old school traditional way.

You also have the option to use shortcuts in Google where you could then create a secondary folder that would act as tags, but based on shortcuts.

I don't love that idea.

I have used shortcuts and they're fine, but tags is better.

Labels are better.

And being able to organize things in a much more intentional way gives you lots of flexibility you otherwise would not have.

And so, yes, there's a possible issue with this because it's not as seamless as I would like to like to see.

I mean, just to explain this to you now, it's a little clunky, but it does exist and you can use it.

And it does provide this additional ability to organize content.

So from my perspective, Google has done a good job to get started.

I just want to see them take it even further and we'll hopefully, fingers crossed, that that will happen down the road.

Now, the fourth and final major area that I want to focus on that Google Docs has that I've done a little work with, but need to do more, is their section of smart chips and building blocks.

So smart chips is where you can select the at symbol inside your Google Doc and this little sub menu pops up right away.

You'll see it immediately.

And in that little sub menu, you'll see smart chips up top and building blocks down below.

Now, smart chips essentially are icons that will display information about links or files or other items.

So some examples of those would include the date, a dropdown menu, a stopwatch, a timer, a task, a variable, a voting chip, or a placeholder chip.

To know what any of those things actually mean, you should try it out.

Open a brand new Google Doc and hit the at symbol and then see what pops up.

You'll see this little list and then select the ones that are available and see what they do because they're very handy in a lot of different scenarios to include things that might change like the date or to have access to a stopwatch in a document or to assign a task.

There's really cool possibilities for what could happen based upon these little kind of like mini features inside of a document.

It makes it more of a living, breathing thing and less of a stagnant, just word-based document.

So smart chips from my perspective are kind of a new frontier of testing and experimentation that I want to spend more time with, but I see a lot of potential for what these things could be.

And then the other area, the building blocks, once again, access in the same way, the at symbol will then pop it up.

You scroll to the bottom of this short menu and you will see a building block section, which are reusable components that you can then create and save for your frequently used content.

Long story short, here's some examples.

Examples of building blocks to include meeting notes, an email draft, a calendar event draft, a code block, a product roadmap, review tracker, project assets, or what I'm most excited about, a custom building block.

Now this has a ton of potential.

Let's imagine a scenario where you want to copy and paste the same information over and over to various documents, but instead of having to save that original content in one location, go find it, copy it and paste it in, or do what I tend to do a keyboard shortcut, which I use various tools for on my Mac.

And you could, you could have that as a saved feature and use a little shortcut and they'll pop it in.

What this does is allows formatting designed by Google docs and you can save some content.

You have formatted exactly like you want it, but then now it's saved as a building block that can be reused in any other Google doc at any time.

This is incredible.

The power and potential here is phenomenal.

If you are trying to customize a certain type of documents, if you're going to work on a book, you're going to work on a web design, work on some kind of a project that's creative in nature.

There is a lot of potential to have custom content that's then copy and paste it over with all the formatting still intact.

This is huge.

The formatting is everything.

If you care about the visuals of things like I obsess over, you need that so, so badly.

And so to have that is a massive game changer for a copy and paste functionality across documents.

Having said all of these exciting things, which I'm very excited about, Google drive does have limitations as a full Evernote replacement.

So I'm not going to officially say it replaces it.

Although officially I will tell you straight up, do not use Evernote, find a better solution for yourself.

But from my perspective, Google drive was never designed to be an Evernote replacement.

It was designed to be what it is.

Google drive is a cloud service to store files and folders, and then try to tackle Microsoft's dominance with word processing and sheets and, and PowerPoint slides, all these things.

So Google drive is a Microsoft competitor, not an Evernote competitor, but they see the opportunity to integrate all kinds of cool features that when put together, give the end user, someone like me, a ton of potential to stay in the Google ecosphere, which for a long time, I was an apple only guy.

And when I shifted to using Google stuff, it's hard to explain just how much my mind expanded to see what's possible.

And now I live in both worlds at the same time.

And it's amazing, but Google drive, once again, is not designed to be an Evernote replacement.

You need to ask yourself a few questions.

Like what is your goal with the way you organize content?

How do you want to visually see your stuff?

How do you want to organize it?

What's an ideal setup?

I can tell you that my perspective on my own stuff has evolved a lot over the years based upon tools are available, but also based on personal preference and the types of projects I'm working on.

There are a lot of variables here.

So I can't give direct advice to an, in a generic sense to say everyone should do X, Y, Z.

There's a lot to consider there.

However, what is true is that Evernote sucks.

I'll say this again.

It's terrible.

And Google drive and Google docs has so much potential.

And so if you have not really committed to a tool, whether it's Google drive, Google docs, or something totally different, commit to a tool, the future of digital organization and the future of your digital organization will always be based on the tools you commit to you optimize and you use every day.

I can't make the argument that my tools are best for you, but I can make the argument that my tools are best for me because I've doubled down on them because I've committed to them.

I've optimized them.

I've poured myself into them.

And because of that, they get better.

And as they get better, I find more opportunities to improve them.

Like I just pointed out in the episode this week, all of these features and more are all built in.

There's a whole slew of stuff.

I didn't even touch this week that Google docs can do.

There's a lot of potential in all of these tools.

So you want to find the one that aligns to your highest priorities for organization and productivity.

You could spend all day tinkering with fancy bells and whistles and some massive waste of time.

It's fun, but a big whole piece of time.

And so you've got to figure out what those core functionalities are and make sure those are the driving force behind your choices.

And then of course, spend your time in those every day, getting the value from them.

You know, I've been asked for years, why I recommend Nozbe as a digital task manager.

And the answer is not because Nozbe is great.

It's because I use Nozbe really well.

And so therefore it's great for me.

Whatever tool you choose to use and dive into is the one that's best for you.

And that's the name of the game.

I could spend all day discussing hundreds and thousands of digital apps that exist.

And all it's going to do is confuse you, which is why I don't spend a lot of time on this podcast, reviewing apps endlessly.

It's a waste of time because what you really need are a couple of tools that matter and you can forget all the others.

That's the future of your organization.

It is simplicity and it is doubling down on the tools that matter.

Having said all of that, if you disagree with me and think that Evernote is awesome and you want to fight me on this, let's go get your tukes up.

You can email me, jeff@jeffstandards.com.

I'd be happy to have a conversation with you.

And of course, I love to get new ideas for better apps and better tools.

And I would love to hear if you have favorite tools that work for you, whether that's your calendar, task manager, digital cloud organizer, whatever it is you want and love to use, tell me about it so I can review those if they're that good here on the show.

Once again, Jeff@jeffsanders.com.

And for the action step this week, of course, go test Google Docs new features and see how they work for you.

Now, as I said, your best tool is the one you commit to using, you optimize and use every day.

I have tested enough apps for myself to know what I want, what works best for my brain, my goals, and my own desire for customization.

So Google Docs is my solution today.

I think you'll love it as well, but you may find another one works better for you.

So find your app and make it your own.

Of course, subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5am Miracle community by going to 5ammiraclepremium.com to get exclusive bonus episodes, ad free content, and more.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life and all that fun begins bright and early.

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