If you use Evernote intensively, you will have a large number of notes that are distributed among many notebooks. This makes it very hard for you to keep track of the information that you need at any particular time. With a self-refreshing dashboard using Filterize, you can see all the data that is important to you on a single screen and access it with just one click.

In this article, we describe how to create a self-refreshing dashboard using Filterize and provide a free dashboard template to inspire you to create one of your own. We also include a link to a how-to video made by our friend Enrico Nahler which Evernote called “one of the best hacks we’ve seen“.    

The problem with a large Evernote database: Losing track of your information

If you use Evernote to its full potential, it is the central “memory” for many of your private and professional digital documents. Heavy Evernote users store hundreds – or even thousands – of notes in their archive. (Evernote allows you to have up to 100,000 notes!) These notes contain everything you need to organize your life and improve your productivity such as bills and receipts, tasks and to-do lists or ideas and inspirations. 

The more intensively you use Evernote, the more important lists become, so that you can find the documents you need quickly. However, there are two problems with Evernote lists that limit their usefulness in a large and ever-changing archive.

1. Although you can create a table of contents in Evernote, the resulting list is static. This means that when you add or delete notes that should belong to the list, the list will not adapt. What is needed are self-refreshing lists that stay up-to-date automatically.
2. Evernote can’t create a note that unites lists for different topics, for example tasks from different contexts. This requires you to click back and forth, which is irritating and time-consuming. It would be nice to be able to create a note that unites different lists on the same page.  

Evernote dashboards with Filterize

The goal of a dashboard is to display all the information contained in your Evernote that is most important to you on a single screen. This helps you to focus on what you need to do and to access the information you need with a single click.

In Filterize, a dashboard is a note containing a collection of lists of links to notes. Lists can contain anything that is the result of an Evernote search operation. Because Filterize executes an update every time you make a change to a note, these lists will automatically self-refresh, ensuring that your dashboard is always up-to-date.

A Filterize dashboard can contain an unlimited number of lists, which are displayed side-by-side simultaneously in a style that you define. It can also include familiar Evernote elements such as checkboxes, reminder times and tags that you need in order to work efficiently. 

The featured image at the beginning of the article shows a screenshot of a Filterize dashboard. It contains an overview of all your relevant tasks, notes related to your team and a selection of your notes as inspiration. The Eisenhower matrix is another example of a dashboard that is specifically designed for time-management.  

How to create a dashboard in Filterize

The following steps explain how to create a self-refreshing dashboard using Filterize. If you are not already a Filterize user, you will need to sign up first. 

1. Create a new note in Evernote called “Dashboard”, and style it according to your taste.
2. Log in to Filterize.
3. Go to table of contents and create a TOC for each category that you need in your dashboard, for example To-dos for today, Inspiration for your evening meal, or your maybe list from Getting Things Done. We have provided instructions for building a Table of Contents in a tutorial. In order to build a good ToC, you will need to be familiar with the Evernote search operators.
4. Place the marker for each list at the location in the dashboard where you would like it to appear.
5. Synchronize Evernote. You may need to repeat the synchronization a few times until Filterize has replaced each marker by the corresponding list.  

Some ideas for your dashboard content

Here are some popular dashboard categories:

• To-dos grouped according to time-frame (today, this week, sometime, …)
• Ideas and inspiration
• Recent emails
• Current stock market info
• Upcoming birthdays and celebrations
• Project deadlines
• Calls that need to be made 

Tips for getting the most from your dashboard

• Use different colors to distinguish different categories of information such as red for todos and blue for ideas
• limit the lists to a manageable length
• Share your dashboard with friends and colleagues so that they can quickly reference the things that are currently important to you. 
• Use the styling options provided by Evernote such as tables and fonts to make your dashboard distinctive.
• Use meaningful titles for each category of lists.
• Make the titles more attractive by adding emojis. 

Try it now!

You can build your self-refreshing Evernote dashboard right now by signing up with Filterize. Filterize is free for up to three TOCs; with a premium plan you can have as many as you like.   

Additional resources and links

• Enrico Nahler has created a YouTube video about making dashboards with Filterize.
• We have developed a dashboard template in which you only need to insert the TOC markers. It is an Evernote note in a ZIP file. Simply unpack the file and drag it into your Evernote app.

Filterize is a cloud service that acts as your personal Evernote assistant. Tell the software how you organize your notes or just let its Artificial Intelligence learn how to do it automatically. Filterize will then manage your notes in the background, eliminating repetitive tasks, avoiding errors and saving you time.