Ditch the notebook & use Evernote
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I had an awesome idea the other day… in one of the two places where all awesome ideas come to us: in bed, drifting off to sleep.
There is this amazing app that you can get across pretty much all devices called Evernote - I’m writing this to you in Evernote right now. It’s an amazing digital notebook or folder/filing cabinet. You create a series of notebooks which are then backed up to the cloud & synced across your devices. It’s like downloading your brain contents, inside an app, in nicely divided up notebooks. Yep. A digital brain.
This idea of downloading everything from your brain got me thinking. I use Evernote for a whole range of things, but one of them is to write myself lists of things that I need to address with my doctor at my next appointment. Enter, brainwave.
Evernote could replace the medical folder I have sitting on my shelf. OK, let's make that "medical folders" and sitting on lots of shelves (are you feeling me?) What if I could actually just put all of that into Evernote and have it at my fingertips whenever I needed it? You can upload photos, scanned images, documents, tables; you can pretty much word-process inside of Evernote, plus some. 
You can tag and then search which means that when you see a doctor in 6 months time who asks you when your latest blood test was, you can search those tags and find your last blood test results (assuming you got a copy and either photographed or scanned them in). How amazing is that! Obviously, you might have some questions about security, and that's fine (and good, so you should!). I use Evernote probably hundreds of times a day, working on client websites, so I have upgraded my Evernote to Premium (for more space & security) so that I have a password on my account & devices, but a few months ago I believe they released the ability to passcode protect all accounts. That means that theoretically, people can’t access the information in my notebooks without the password, or without me sharing the notebook with them. Which is another cool function - you can share notebooks with people, so if you want to share it with your partner, or your doctor, you technically could if they also have Evernote. I started using Evernote a few years ago on the recommendation of a few huge names in entrepreneurship in the USA… and I know that they wouldn’t be using an App that had security issues. But just in case you are wondering, Evernote has an entire security team which is dedicated to ensuring that our data is kept safe and secure. I’m pretty comfortable with that. Obviously, treat it like you would any other internet based application. I have a personal philosophy: if you don’t want it to maybe somehow, illegally, scarily or otherwise get into the wrong hands on the internet, don’t have it on your devices at all. I’m pretty excited about this idea, to be honest! I am going to start doing it myself…. and I will keep you posted on how it goes. I’m thinking notebooks called "physiotherapy exercises" "mindfulness practices" "test results" "next appointment questions" and then notes within them…. Knee exercises, shoulder exercises etc…. Breathing activities, podcast links etc….. Blood test results, ultrasound & X-ray reports etc…. The possibilities!!!!! Let me know if you are trying it too and how it’s working for you….
You can tag and then search which means that when you see a doctor in 6 months time who asks you when your latest blood test was, you can search those tags and find your last blood test results (assuming you got a copy and either photographed or scanned them in). How amazing is that! Obviously, you might have some questions about security, and that's fine (and good, so you should!). I use Evernote probably hundreds of times a day, working on client websites, so I have upgraded my Evernote to Premium (for more space & security) so that I have a password on my account & devices, but a few months ago I believe they released the ability to passcode protect all accounts. That means that theoretically, people can’t access the information in my notebooks without the password, or without me sharing the notebook with them. Which is another cool function - you can share notebooks with people, so if you want to share it with your partner, or your doctor, you technically could if they also have Evernote. I started using Evernote a few years ago on the recommendation of a few huge names in entrepreneurship in the USA… and I know that they wouldn’t be using an App that had security issues. But just in case you are wondering, Evernote has an entire security team which is dedicated to ensuring that our data is kept safe and secure. I’m pretty comfortable with that. Obviously, treat it like you would any other internet based application. I have a personal philosophy: if you don’t want it to maybe somehow, illegally, scarily or otherwise get into the wrong hands on the internet, don’t have it on your devices at all. I’m pretty excited about this idea, to be honest! I am going to start doing it myself…. and I will keep you posted on how it goes. I’m thinking notebooks called "physiotherapy exercises" "mindfulness practices" "test results" "next appointment questions" and then notes within them…. Knee exercises, shoulder exercises etc…. Breathing activities, podcast links etc….. Blood test results, ultrasound & X-ray reports etc…. The possibilities!!!!! Let me know if you are trying it too and how it’s working for you….UPDATE: This is TOTALLY working for me. Have you tried it?