Two things changed my life yesterday: Evernote, and the Coursera mobile app. Let’s start with Evernote

If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly absorbing everything internet. I eat internet. I sleep internet. I would speak internet if I could. The problem here is that there’s so much coming at me all of the time, it’s hard to hold onto the things that are really cool that I want to save for later. Half the time I’ll stumble upon something inspiring and store it in a million different places. I have like a zillion poetic lines and website ideas stored in everything from Google Drive to the Notes section of my phone. Everything is so scattered and it sucks.

I have goals. You have goals. I have favorites. I have snippets of text that I like. I have pictures I love. I need reminders. I need motivation. I need a place to store my mottoes, my grocery lists, my potential children names. I used to just throw it all in my phone or whatever was easiest to access when the moment called for it but now! Now there is a solution. Now I have discovered the fucking excellence that is Evernote. And it syncs to ALL OF YOUR DEVICES. I’ve got a Mac, a PC, an Android tablet, AND an iPhone. I haven’t been able to find a service that lets me sync everything so I can access it from any device, at any time. Until yesterday

How badly do I sound like a commercial right now? I promise I’m not getting paid for telling you this

But this Evernote story started out Everhorribly. I’d heard of Evernote before, but was too lazy to try anything new until a coworker last week suggested it when he saw me using another task management app, Asana. So yesterday I decided to try it out. I registered, neglected to watch any of the videos on how to use it, and just dove right in

And you know what? It was fucking terrible.

It sucked. I hated it so bad. I was so frustrated. I couldn’t make a new notebook when I wanted to, I was having trouble sorting, it was a big mess. I closed it, and almost never looked back. Then for some strange reason I told myself to give it another chance. But did I go back to their website? Did I actually seek out the ever loving team at Evernote? Absolutely not. I went where everyone on the planet goes when they don’t know how to do something. I went to fucking YouTube. That’s where the people are.

I ended up finding this AWESOME tutorial on how to achieve goals with Evernote by some guy named Scott. After I was done watching it, I was freakin’ hooked. And now I feel like a brand new person. I feel like someone just cleaned my apartment for me. And organized all of my mail. Everything is sooo shiny. I can store screenshots, I can set reminders, and in the app I can even snap photos of shit I want to save for later…including DOCUMENTS! This is just too awesome to talk about any longer without going over the top, so I’ll stop. But truly, give it a whirl.

Second life changing thing? The Coursera mobile app. This is a shorter story, I promise.

Coursera is free school. You can literally take any online class you want there for free. I can’t stress this enough, guys. Free. (What’s that, business school? Did you say something? I didn’t hear it, I was too busy getting a free education.)

I’m currently taking a free online Stanford class through Coursera called Organizational Analysis. It’s 6 weeks long, and totally legit. You can even earn a distinction. I took this class because I’m obsessed with learning about how organizations tick, being that I’m going to form one at some point in the not too distant future. I sort of want to know a thing or two.

The class was going great until I fell really behind. I couldn’t squeeze in the right time to listen to the lectures between working all day, blogging, and trying to work on my new website side project. Coming home and having to sit in a chair and listen to lectures was just excruciating because I really just wanted to blog, write, and read. As much as I love learning, I just couldn’t get in the mood to listen to a professor after a long day of work.

Then I found out that Coursera has a mobile app, and that you can LISTEN TO ALL OF THE LECTURES ON YOUR PHONE WITHOUT AN INTERNET CONNECTION. Sorry for the caps, but do you realize what this means. You literally only need to have phone battery to learn any freakin’ subject you want. (Granted, the app is $3.99 but seriously, I pay more for coffee). The time we live in guys, the time we live in…

So basically, I’ve been listening to my lectures while I drive, and it’s been working out BEAUTIFULLY, since my commute has gotten really dull, and the radio these days just gets my blood pressure up (if I hear Bruno Mars or Holy Grail ONE more time…). I just find it so amazing that we can learn anywhere. There’s literally no excuse not to, if you want to. And I so want to!

So much awesomeness, it feels like Christmas. And the week’s only just begun…(Carol King, is that you?)

(UPDATE: Correction, the Carpenters sang “We’ve Only Just Begun”, not Carol King…thanks, hindsight).

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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