At the end of 2016, I published a book called The Master Note System: A New Way to Use Evernote to Organize Your Life. In my book, I show you step by step how to organize everything so you can find it in a few seconds with a few clicks, taps or keystrokes, on all your devices and platforms. This is a new way of thinking about how to store important data and documents so you can find everything by a tap on a single page — your My Life Master Note — or on separate Master Notes that meet your organizational needs. You can do this with the free version of Evernote.

The Master Note System comes with a free Resource Kit with many templates so you can instantly organize your life on a single page. A recent reviewer tested my claim that you could find everything you need in your Evernote account in a few seconds or a few clicks. Here’s what he said: “Awesome. Turned Evernote from a pile of notes that I dreaded searching into a lean, mean, organization machine. It’s hard to describe the change it will make in your opinion of organization,” Then he listed 8 examples with the clicks it took.

It doesn’t take long to set this up, and you can do it bit by bit or just start with what’s most important to you and do the rest of your re-organization as you go along. Just start somewhere. I provide full instructions, many examples and a bunch of free done-for-you templates to get you going. This is a flexible and customizable system, easy to learn and tweak. If you’ve never used Evernote, my book explains the fundamentals with numerous screenshots.

So don’t keep wasting time looking for stuff you know you stored somewhere. No matter how fast you search, you won’t be able to beat the two clicks or two seconds it takes with my system (not counting opening your master note, which I leave open all the time and keep at the top of the shortcuts bar).

For more about The Master Note System, go to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Still not sure? Read this. Or see my post from November 2016.