Evernote Tasks Feature Review for Daily Planning

First time opening tasks in evernote

When I first noticed the little Tasks button in Evernote it honestly looked like one of those random features they toss in and forget about. But when I clicked it, I got a side panel that was different from my usual stack of notes. Instead of long text drafts, there were little boxes for actions. The default view showed an empty task list with a big button saying Add Task. I typed something simple like “send invoice” and hit enter. It immediately showed up with a checkbox on the left, and unlike some old-school to do apps, I could actually embed it inside a note. The first task I put inside a client research note felt surprisingly natural. It was like having a sticky note right on top of my long writing without sliding off the page. 🙂

What threw me off the first time though—when I checked the task complete box from inside the note, I expected it to also remove from the panel on the right. It didn’t; it just marked it complete but kept it there until I manually switched views. That little lag between how my brain wanted it to behave and how Evernote decided to sync the view got in the way for about a week.

Setting up recurring daily routines

Creating recurring tasks was the point where I realized Evernote’s Tasks feature was not designed in the same mindset as Google Calendar reminders. You type in a task like “plan tomorrow” and then click the little clock icon. A modal pops up with options for due date, reminder, and repeat. The repeat choices are very minimal—just daily, weekly, monthly. For my daily planning, I needed to remind myself “check yesterday’s notes, pick three things, plan today” every morning. So I set a task for daily at 9am. That worked fine, but on a couple of occasions if I snoozed the reminder on my phone, the desktop app didn’t catch up. Suddenly I had two different versions of the same task—one snoozed, one marked overdue. I saw people in the Evernote forums describing the same glitch with comments like: “The reminder badge showed up twice, one of them would never clear.”

So I developed a workaround. Instead of relying on Evernote’s inbuilt repeat, I cloned the exact same task every Sunday for the week ahead. Yes, it feels manual, but the tasks fire correctly and never duplicate. And since they live inside a “Daily Planning” note, I just keep that open as a dashboard tab.

Keyboard shortcuts and real speed gains

If you’re the kind of person who hates clicking three times just to mark something done, the Evernote shortcuts are where Tasks stop being clunky. On Windows you can use Ctrl Shift T to insert a task inside a note immediately. On Mac it’s Command Shift T. Once I memorized that, I could brain dump to dos straight into whatever meeting note I was typing. I didn’t even stop typing, just added tasks inline. The trick though is remembering that typing [] in markdown style does nothing here. For a tool that lives in notes, you’d expect it to respect standard markdown checklists, but nope. If you paste in a list of markdown checkboxes, they stay static.

The good part is once a task exists, you can tab through it quickly and hit Enter to stack more tasks. I’ve clocked myself at about twenty tasks in under two minutes. When I’m planning the next day, it feels way faster than flipping back and forth between Evernote and Todoist. Though, honestly, if you’re already wired into Todoist or ClickUp, the lack of keyboard customization in Evernote does feel limiting.

Organizing tasks across multiple notes

Here’s where it gets messy if you don’t iron out your system early. Since tasks can live inside any note, you could technically scatter them everywhere. A grocery reminder in a recipe note, a deadline hidden inside a project note, and a dozen tasks logged in random meeting notes. The global panel shows them all in one place, which sounds nice, until you realize the context is kind of hidden. You’ll see “Call Sarah” in your task list but forget which meeting note you had that connected to. When you click the tiny arrow, it takes you back to the source note, but I found myself constantly clicking back and forth.

So I forced myself into creating one master planning note with a heading called Tasks for the week. Every task I created, even if during a meeting, I copy-pasted into that one note. Yes, I break the “tasks live inside notes” philosophy, but at least my brain trusts where things are. Otherwise, searching across tasks feels slower than hunting inside Evernote search. This is the opposite of what they probably want you to do, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it works for daily planning.

Reminders and notification quirks

I was hoping Evernote reminders would be as reliable as my phone alarm. Nope. Some mornings my desktop app does not trigger the sound unless it has been open for an hour already. The mobile app is better—iOS in particular shows a lock screen alert at the right time. Android once failed to fire at all until I opened the app. That unreliability matters a lot if you actually depend on this for time sensitive tasks. I even tested it on airplane mode flights: tasks created offline synced correctly when I landed, but reminders didn’t retroactive-alert. So if your routine depends on push notifications, Evernote alone feels risky.

If you want notifications to be bulletproof, I personally suggest pairing Evernote tasks with a stronger reminder system like Google Calendar. Just throw a single daily reminder in Calendar that says “Check Evernote Tasks,” instead of relying on the tasks themselves to buzz you. Otherwise you’ll miss days without realizing it.

Using tasks for real daily planning

I kept a habit where every evening I opened a Daily Log note. Inside, I listed yesterday’s tasks at the top, checked them off, and rolled over any unfinished ones into a fresh list titled Tomorrow. With Evernote tasks, this feels cleaner than before because they remain checkable even after I copy them into a new note. But again, without proper recurring stability, I ended up just copying yesterday’s unfinished list rather than trusting automation.

A small trick I discovered—when you toggle the view in the right pane from Due Date to Note, you can actually see all tasks grouped by which note they live in. This makes daily planning easier because I can quickly jump back and forth between yesterday’s log and today’s. I wish they let me pin one note as a dashboard, but even with this workaround I get something resembling a planner board.

Comparing with paper and other apps

For context, I’ve tried both the completely manual bullet journal and heavy automation setups like Notion databases. Evernote Tasks sits awkwardly in the middle. On paper, you can migrate tasks by just drawing an arrow; in Notion, you can set up rollovers automatically with formulas. In Evernote, you kind of drag tasks around manually, which sounds like work until you realize the benefit is they’re right next to the content they relate to. Like when I planned a podcast episode and listed cutaway points directly inside the script as tasks—it felt like the first time the writing tool and the action list actually blended properly.

If you’re curious, the official Evernote site at evernote.com does have a breakdown of task features, but I wouldn’t go there expecting all bugs to be mentioned. The hiccups are real and you only learn them by living with it.

Why I still keep it in my workflow

Even with all its flaws—glitchy notifications, clunky repeat handling, and scattered tasks—I still find myself using Evernote Tasks daily. The reason is simple: my notes and tasks finally live in the exact same place. If I drop Evernote entirely, I lose not just task lists but long blocks of writing, images, snippets, and half my ideas. So for me it’s less about chasing perfect automation and more about convenience. Asking Evernote to be a rock solid task manager feels unfair; treating it as a sticky note inside my writing tool is exactly what makes it valuable.

What’s funny is I have Todoist still pinned on my phone for things like bill due dates, but Evernote Tasks now holds my actual day planning and small brain dump items. It’s the thing I open between tasks, not instead of tasks. And weirdly, that imperfect positioning is why it works fine for me now.