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How Evernote built its to-do list feature — and why it took a decade

Jun 23, 2021

Tasks is pure New Evernote. Rather than build a separate app or consign to-do lists to its own corner of Evernote, it's a compilation of every task inside every note a user has, sorted by due date or the note they're in. That sounds simple enough — and again, has been the vision all along — but Small said it just wasn't possible before. "It's really the first demonstration of the kind of thing we can do with the new infrastructure," he said, "because you've never been able to take a slice of content that cuts across all your notes, touch the content inside the note and change inside the note."

That, in a nutshell, is what Evernote spent the last two years working on: turning its platform from a digital filing cabinet into a system that can smartly surface information at the right time and place, and actually help users do the things inside their notes. Evernote's big idea was always that notes were a powerful way to build a store of personal knowledge and information, and now it's finally getting around to figuring out what to do with it all. Over time, that will also mean modernizing Evernote's API to work better with other tools and improving its search and processing capabilities, all of which Small said is on the roadmap as well.

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