I started down this road last fall and got sidetracked. Now I’ve got to get serious about organizing the notes I’m starting to put together for my next book project.

For my last book, I simply saved everything as Word files. An interview? Word file. An article? Word file. Notes on a book? Word file. Then I entered each of them on an Excel spreadsheet that I could sort and search. I built in a link on each entry to the underlying Word document.

Several people have suggested that I switch to DEVONthink, which has a reputation for being a sophisticated but difficult program. Or Evernote. I haven’t spent enough time with either one to form an opinion. But what is the advantage to using one of those programs over the method I just described? What am I missing?