How I Replaced Evernote with Google Drive: A Simple Workflow for Managing Notes

For years, I relied on Evernote to keep my notes organized and manage my to-dos. But with recent limitations on the free plan and frustrating sync issues, I knew it was time for a change. After trying out several other apps, I landed on a surprising solution: Google Drive.

Why I Needed an Evernote Alternative

I used Evernote in a straightforward way—mostly plain text notes organized into projects. But I ran into two major issues: recurring sync errors and new restrictions on the free version, which meant I couldn’t create or sync new notes the way I used to.

How I Used Evernote

In Evernote, I organized my notes into notebooks (which I treated like projects) and included the following elements:

• Title: Often with a date in the format YYYYMMDD for sorting.
• Note content: My to-dos or details related to the project.

I also used tags to organize notes based on:

• Priority (P1 to P5)
• Location (Home, Work)
• Timeframe (Today, This Week, This Month, No Date)

Evaluating Evernote Alternatives

While exploring alternatives like Obsidian and Notion, I realized many had more features than I needed. That’s when I thought about Google Drive.

Building a Custom Solution with Google Drive

I started by using Google Sheets to create a simple overview of my tasks. I listed:

• Category
• Title
• Creation date

For each note, I created a separate Google Doc and added the link in the spreadsheet. I also used dropdown menus for tags like priority and location, saving me time as it already had a preloaded list of options. And finally, I added the Required columns to hold a date or blanks if no planned date is feasible

This system worked for me, but there was one downside as some tasks still required manual work. 

Being a software engineer, I knew I could improve this with a few tweaks.

Second iteration - adding clarity with Conditional Formatting

To make my task management system more intuitive, I added conditional formatting. This gave me visual cues when certain tasks needed attention. For example, if a due date was approaching or a task had no deadline but was marked as high priority, the cell would be highlighted. I also created visual alerts for missing 'Required' or 'When' information for tasks with a priority higher than P5.

By adding an 'Age' column, I could quickly see how long a task had been pending, making it easier to prioritize overdue items. A new 'Tags' column allowed me to filter tasks even more effectively, categorizing them by context or type for better organization.

Third iteration - automation using Google App Scripts

Even when the formats and new columns were added to the final result, it was still tedious to create a new Google Docs file and add the link to the specific row in Google Sheets, to solve this I used Google App Scripts.

By using App Script, I automated several tasks that made managing notes much easier:

• Actions
• Add New Item - Add a new row and pre-fills required the Created and Age columns.
• Add Document - Creates a Google Doc file, adding the link to this new file to the Link column.
• Add Spreadsheet - Similar to previous, but creating a Google Sheets file.
• Add Link - Prepares the 'Link' column with a placeholder for later editing.
• Create Event - Using the information in the Required column, connect to Google Calendar and created an Event

Some final tweaks were still required to fully work:

• Creation of 2 files (Google Doc and Google Sheet) to be used as templates to create new ones.
• Add a Tab to the Sheet to save operational parameters.
• Creation of a Notes folder structure in Google Drive to have an order in the Notes storage.

Conclusion

Google App Scripts were a great addition for automation, new operation is something like:

1. From Menu, select Actions -> Create New item
2. Fill informative fields (Title at a minimum)
3. If needed, create a new file. From Menu, select Actions -> Create Document
4. Click the link of the document and start writing.

After using this system for a few months, I can confidently say it meets all my note-taking and task management needs. By customizing Google Sheets and automating processes with App Script, I’ve built a flexible, efficient solution that even rivals dedicated apps. Plus, with separate sheets for things like book lists or recipes, the system adapts to different needs. It saved me time and made organizing my life much simpler.

If you’d like to try this system yourself, reach out, and I’ll share the latest version of my Google Sheet. 

How do you currently manage your tasks, and what’s your go-to tool for staying organized?

In a later post I’ll explain the Scripts I used to automate the functionality.

When we tell people to do their jobs, we get workers. When we trust people to do their jobs, we get leaders - Simon Sinek