Note taking
Notes taking and writing things down vary greatly from person to person and location (office, car, home, recreating, etc.) How often do you snap your fingers at something forgotten, look for a phone number your wrote on a scrap of paper. We have great ideas sometimes and often need to call someone about something vital. Our brains are finicky and temperamental and can’t always be trusted to do something on time. We all face distractions of all kinds, all day. Aha, if I just write it down, I’ll remember.
The digital world gives us a chance to get our ideas on electronic “paper” besides writing or typing words, we can illustrate with sketches, circles, and highlights. This potentially leads to better documentation, collaboration and creativity. BUT, our meeting notes, agenda summaries get recorded, summarized, added to, commented on, found, lost, emailed and then filed. Conversations and task list pile up and our best intentions get twisted into a tangled web. Research suggests that employees spend some 75 hours a year looking for notes, items, files, phone numbers, whatever. That’s a lot and very costly, think in terms of billions of dollars. Ever feel that that note was here just a second ago?
If a customer calls and wants something, can we find it quickly and give them the right information? If you appear to be groping, what kind of reputation are you projecting? Besides the monetary aspects of this, there is stress associated with feeling the pressure of not being on top of things. No one in this world needs more stress as it can add to serious health problems. Better note taking and organization can help. It’s certainly not going to remove all stress but it’s a step in the right direction.
Typed notes are great but research shows that hand written notes and illustration can be better retained and engaged with by the note taker. Write and draw in a notebook and then digitize it or use a stylus to write directly on a tablet. Some apps can turn handwriting directly into text. In this digital form it can easily be filed and shared. Tablets can help this work be more fun and creative with colors, shading, line shapes and other tools to illustrate importance and clarity. The right side of the brain is involved with creativity and is free flowing. The left side is analytical and judgmental and asks “what is this?”. So using a pen, pencil, or stylus and manually recording things is engaging the right brain which can temporarily override the analytical side. Temporarily over-riding the judgmental side lets us increase productivity and learn more. We can go back and “analyze” it later. Note taking should strive for quality over just quantity. Transitioning from just typing them on a keyboard to using our handwriting lets one be more efficient and engaged that what can be done with just a keyboard. By minimizing steps between notation and documentation natural note taking techniques help eliminate those disheartening and time consuming internal and digital distractions while supercharging our brain for higher retention, faster recall, better understanding, and greater overall efficiency.
Note taking is memos and minutes, scribbles and sketches, drafts and doodles. Although doodling has a reputation for being mindless, lazy, and distracting, research suggests otherwise. Doodlers recall, on average, 29% more information than non-doodlers. Doodling sparks our understanding by blending all four learning modalities (auditory, visual, kinetic, and reading/writing) into one mega-comprehension superpower. Doodling then creates concept anchors that drive retention and development. Think how a smell (relate it to a doodle) can bring back memories of things from the past. Essentially, people are more
likely to remember up to 90% of what they are shown versus just 10% of what they hear. This way, doodles not only engage memory, but their unintimidating and personal nature make it easier to engage an audience in complex materials. Even Presidents doodle (https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/54412/21-presidential-doodles).
The blend of longhand and digital technology equips note takers with the best of yesterday and today. Smart pens eliminate the annoying process of line-by-line transcription at the push of a button. The most tedious part of note taking is immediately overcome by technology that recognizes your handwriting and translates it instantly to digital text which is stored on your device or on the cloud where you can access it or share it later.
Four tips for note taking in meetings or classes:
- Keep it simple – you shouldn’t write down everything. Just focus on the key points and highlight what’s important.
- Make it your own – Put those key point in your own words. Digest it and express your version of it.
- Put it together – when the meeting or call is over, don’t stop, get up and leave. Take a few moments to read over what you wrote and speculate on the outcome or think about what could be the pain points in the future. How can you use this?
- Make it work for you – drawing the speaker as a dinosaur on your notes might indicate your lack of interest, but maybe it’s time for a traditional outline format to just get the meat of what’s being said/presented.
Notes are more than just dictations and doodles; they are the natural first step in execution, the initial spark of innovation. Our fondness for pen on paper isn’t just nostalgia in action, it’s our brains demanding to be engaged. Modern note taking harnesses that cognitive process to drive creativity and retention during meetings and conversations, rather than letting the creative process disconnect
There is not a “best way”. Look over links below and get some ideas. You will probably create a blend of what you learn. The main point is to be engaged when you are taking notes, make them your own and review the important ones so they will stick with you. Also put them somewhere so that you can find them when needed. Give the file a descriptive name and “tag” the note by topic, location, importance, and so on all of which will help you find it when you need it.
There are digital pens and smart pens each with their own plusses and minuses. Just do a search for these two devices to see what might work for you. Here’s a link: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-smart-pens/ Some smart pens can also record audio which can be useful in some situations such as a medical examination or in law enforcement.
Some note taking apps including Evernote can use OCR (optical character recognition) to turn that handwriting into searchable text. Presuming its reasonably legible.
Also see the Cornell method of notetaking. The Cornell method provides a systematic format for condensing and organizing notes. This system of taking notes is designed for use by a high school or college level student. There are several ways of taking notes, but one of the most common is the “two column” notes style. The student divides the paper into two columns: the note-taking column (usually on the right) is twice the size of the questions/keyword column, which is on the left. The student leaves open five to seven lines, or about two inches (5 cm), at the bottom of the page.
Notes from a lecture or text are written in the note-taking column; notes usually consist of the main ideas of the text or lecture, and longer ideas are paraphrased. Long sentences are avoided; symbols or abbreviations are used instead. To assist with future reviews, relevant questions or key words (which should be recorded as soon as possible, so that the lecture and questions will be fresh in the student’s mind) are written in the left-hand key word column. These notes can be taken from any source of information, such as fiction books, DVDs, lectures, or text books, etc. When reviewing the material, the student can cover the note-taking (right) column while attempting to answer the questions/keywords in the key word or cue (left) column. The student is encouraged to reflect on the material and review the notes regularly. (from Wikipedia).
Here’s a link to a short video on YouTube https://youtu.be/lsR-10piMp4
Here are some more links as the topics covered above are not the only way.
https://www.lifehack.org/856826/note-taking
https://www.oxfordlearning.com/5-effective-note-taking-methods/
https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/effective-note-taking-in-class/
Nice reccomendations