On December 18th, Harvard Business Review Press will release my first ebook: Work Smarter with Evernote. This short guide shows how Evernote can help you become more focused and effective on the job—and get ahead in your career.

I’d like to ask for your help: please buy a copy of book for yourself or as a gift for a colleague or friend (you’ll be able to gift the Kindle book as of tomorrow; you can’t gift a pre-order). The book is aimed at people who’ve always want to try Evernote or have given it a try; even Evernote power users will find lots of ideas about how to use it to strengthen their professional focus. Once you’ve got your hands on a copy, I would be delighted if you would post a review on Amazon or iTunes.

And if you share my passion for Evernote, or if you are one of the many kind people who have shared my work from this site or HBR over the years, I hope you’ll also consider sharing news of this book on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or your own blog. Some links to make this a little easier are further down this page.

Where to find it

You can find Work Smarter with Evernote available for pre-order:

• on Amazon
• on iTunes

To jump into the conversation on Twitter and Facebook:

• my Twitter handle: @awsamuel
• hashtag: #wswe
• Facebook page for the book

About the book

In the past five years I have spoken with dozens of friends, thousands of social media trainees and the occasional random stranger about how a digital notebook like Evernote can not only transform their productivity but also support their professional growth. It only takes a quick demo to leave them eager to start using Evernote right now, usually after seeing the way all my meeting notes are just a click away, or how I created my own tablet-ready Paris guidebook using the Evernote web clipper, or after the mind-blowing moment when I show them how Evernote’s character recognition means that typing the word unique brings up the horribly scrawled whiteboard I snapped three years ago.

Once I’ve got someone fired up by Evernote’s transformative potential, what I really want to do is sit down with them for an hour or two so that I can walk them through all the ways it can save them time, sharpen their professional focus and give them instant access to just about everything they have read, written or discovered. Work Smarter with Evernote is a short guide that walks you through everything I’d show you if we had that hour together.

Work Smarter with Evernote is the first in a series of short ebooks that I will be publishing with HBR over the next year, all of which help you use key social media tools to be more focused and effective on the job, and take your professional life to the next level. Like some of what you’ve seen on my blog over the years, these ebooks are a hybrid of tech help, self-help and productivity how-to. Thanks to the hard work of Harvard Business Review’s editorial team — and especially, the brilliant Ania Wieckowski, who is editing this series — Work Smarter with Evernote is a resource I’m proud to share both with fellow Evernote fans and would-be Evernote users.

Tweetable links

Click to tweet this: New ebook from @harvardbiz: Work Smarter with @Evernote, by my friend @awsamuel. http://amzn.to/wswevernote

Click to tweet this: Is 2013 the year you’ll work smarter with Evernote? @awsamuel’s new ebook can help. http://amzn.to/wswevernote

Click to tweet this: I love @Evernote! This new ebook from @harvardbiz will show you how it can help you work smarter, too. http://amzn.to/wswevernote

More ways to share

If you’d like to talk about the book in more than 140 characters, here are some short descriptions that can help you get started:

Evernote, which helps you capture and organize all your digital notes, is one of my favorite apps. If you want to understand how it can help you make your own work more effective, check out Work Smarter with Evernote, a new book from Harvard Business Review Press. It’s a short guide by Alexandra Samuel that you can buy today at http://amzn.to/wswevernote

When you capture everything, and organize your work so that your top priorities stay front-and-centre, you can be more productive and more creative. In Work Smarter with Evernote, a new ebook from Harvard Business Review, Alexandra Samuel shows you how the free Evernote app can transform the way you work. Check it out here: http://amzn.to/wswevernote

Productivity books can help you make better use of your time. Software manuals can help you make better use of technology. In Work Smarter with Evernote, Alexandra Samuel brings time and tech together by showing you how to set up and use Evernote so that you can be more focused and productive. It’s the first book in a new series from Harvard Business Review Press, available on iTunes and Amazon: http://amzn.to/wswevernote

Shareable quotes

These short excerpts from the book are ready to share as summaries or sample tips:

If you have ever wasted a minute looking for the notes you jotted down last week, wracked your brain for the name of that supplier you met last month, or wondered what you really accomplished in the last year, a web-based notebook can be a transformative tool. Getting hung up on questions like “where did I put that?” and “what should I really do next?” doesn’t just waste time and energy; it can actually keep you from achieving your full potential. By capturing all your work in one place and organizing it to keep your top priorities front and center, a web-based notebook can help you take charge of all of those thoughts and ideas—and let you take control of your priorities and get ahead in your job—in a way that works for you. — from Work Smarter with Evernote by Alexandra Samuel (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012)

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[O]rganizing your work into notebooks helps you anticipate and structure what you should pay attention to so that you stay focused on what matters most. Think of your notebooks not as folders for cataloging each note that comes along; think of them instead as buckets for you to fill. If you’re trying to get out of the weeds of individual sales calls and instead think about the new markets you want to tap into, don’t just create notebooks labeled “Smith Account” and “QLN Account.” Create notebooks like “Key Industries” or “West Coast Prospects.” — from Work Smarter with Evernote by Alexandra Samuel (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012)

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Saved searches can…help you resist the urge to turn everything into a notebook. If you’re working on a short-term project, it may be easiest to gather the relevant notes by searching for a particular keyword (like the name of a client) and then saving the search results, rather than creating a separate notebook for that project. You can access your saved searches anytime, and all the notes that include your keyword or search string will appear in your notes window just as they do when you’re browsing within a notebook or tag. — from Work Smarter with Evernote by Alexandra Samuel (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012)

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Many companies and organizations use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to track contact with customers, supporters, or vendors. If your company doesn’t have a CRM, try Evernote as a lightweight alternative. Create a separate notebook for each client or lead, and keep notes on each time you have contact with that company. Encourage your colleagues to do the same, so you can all see one another’s notes. — from Work Smarter with Evernote by Alexandra Samuel (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012)

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To be a leader today, you have to let go of the fantasy of keeping up with social media. Instead, you must focus on becoming a social leader, someone who can truly contribute and thrive in a professional world that has been reinvented by the advent of social media. That doesn’t mean getting special training so that you can succeed in social media. On the contrary, it means using social media to develop the skills, habits, and mind-set that characterize today’s successful leaders.
Making thoughtful use of a web-based notebook like Evernote is one of the best ways to train yourself to think and act this way. — from Work Smarter with Evernote by Alexandra Samuel (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012)

How did I create such a clear explanation of how you can help promote this book?

By drawing on the example of the master of explanation, Lee LeFever. His new book, The Art of Explanation, gives you direct access to his genius at explaining everything from RSS to how to prepare for an emergency. No wonder his book page is the clearest explanation I’ve ever seen of how to support a book!

Thank you

Thank you in advance for anything you do to support this new book and series, whether it’s with a Like on the Facebook page, a review on Amazon or sharing your feedback with me directly. Most of all, thank you for reading.