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Monthly Archives: August 2011
how i organize Evernote
I’m not as organized as I’d like to be. I love evernote because it’s easy to make notes, easy to organize, and easy to find them. You can even take pictures of stuff and their servers work some kind of (OCR) magic that enables you to search for text that’s ON A PHOTO. Yup. Take a picture of a starbucks cup, and after a little bit o time you can search “starbucks” in Evernote and find the pic.
I’ve organized my notes into four basic categories:
- Communication–for research, message ideas, my personal stories, humor photos, etc.
- HSM–for random ideas, a shared folder with my team, meeting notes, meeting agendas, life change stories, all church stuff, contact log (pastoral care stuff), etc.
- writing–for blog stuff, random ideas, projects not related to HSM
- personal–stuff for home, travel information, prayer stuff, etc.
My most important folder (“notebook”) is The Pile. I send everything here, and hope to organize it once every month or two. I figure if I get a note in here, I’m doing pretty good. If I can get it to one of my other folders (I mean “stacks”), then I’m the most organized person in the universe (not really).
It’s possible to set up an email address for evernote…this is REALLY HELPFUL…as I’m answering emails, sometimes I’ll BCC evernote (if I CCed it, everyone would have my email address…and then spam my evernote with garbage.) and have it captured.
IPAD and IPHONE apps both are really helpful. Last week I even taught from my IPAD with evernote.
I’ve installed the evernote “clipper” for CHROME … but I don’t really surf the web very much, so it’s not too helpful.
There is an easy way to get Kindle notes to evernote, but I haven’t done that yet… maybe I’ll get to that tomorrow.
Finally, this lady has a dog inside a really nice hotel and she is talking to it with exactly the kind of voice you would expect.
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Five Ways I Experienced Community At Camp
Summer Camp was great for our high school ministry. It was also great for me personally. In the middle of everything that was going on, here were five ways I experienced community at summer camp:
Comfort–Camp is tough work! We planned well, and didn’t see many “curve balls,” but I still got exhausted. I need to be around safe people when I’m tired, or bad things happen. It was good to be with friends and find comfort when I needed it.
Care–Camp is emotional. Physical and mental exhaustion takes a heavy toll, but matters of the heart seem to empty out a deeper place. Here is what is crazy for me, both good things (seeing life change) and bad things (conflict) both take an emotional toll.
Conversation–Camp had tons of great stuff to do: water slides, blob, climbing wall, zip line… Doing stuff is great, but I didn’t want to do so much that I didn’t take time to connect through conversations. Memories make relationships! So do conversations, and I was blessed by several students and leaders this week to get to know them a little better and talk about God.
Challenge–Not all of my ideas are good, some of them are really stupid. One of the things I love about community is that others have different opinions, perspectives, passions, and wisdom. I’m not the smartest person I know, and I don’t have to be when I open myself up to be challenged by others.
Conflict–I can be offensive…it would be impossible for me to be close with someone without eventually offending them…thankfully I have friends in my community that have the courage to speak up. It’s never fun, but it is good.
How about you, what’s one way you experienced community this summer?
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make summer camp spiritual commitments stick
I love camp. Great things happen at camp. I also hate camp. Those great things don’t often translate back into the real world.
I know: you’ve been here before and probably feel the same way. Discipleship and spiritual formation for high school students can be so painful to watch!
My attempt to help make these commitments “stick” is to walk though a few commitments and possible next steps and encourage them to identify the changes they’ve made.
It creates extra “work” for follow up, but I think it’s time well spent.
Here’s the DOC we used: GOING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN (NEXT STEPS)
How would you make it better?
If you liked this article, forward it to a friend. Find Matt on Facebook HERE and Twitter HERE. Get great youth worker resources HERE. Request Matt to speak at your next event HERE.