From the course: Time Management Tips

How to take notes productively

From the course: Time Management Tips

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

How to take notes productively

“

- Many people find value in taking notes. I'm referring to writing down thoughts or important points when you're attending a meeting or when you're attending a seminar. Some people even like to take notes when they're watching a video like this. It can help you stay focused, pay attention, and give you things to review in the future. However, when people take notes, they can also feel a bit overwhelmed and worried they won't be able to review those notes in the future, let alone take action on them. Here are a few tips that leaders I've coached use to get the most out of their note-taking. The first tip is to clearly decide upon one note-taking tool and stick with it. In Time Management Fundamentals, I talk about the six approved gathering points, one of which is your notebook. This can be either paper or digital, but it should be one consistent place where all the notes that you take go. If you have lots of different notebooks or folders within a note-taking app where you're taking new notes, it's too easy to get them lost in the shuffle. While you can store notes in the long term in lots of folders, your place for new notes should always be one spot. Personally, I use a digital notebook like OneNote and have a folder in it called Inbox. I use that one folder for all new notes. If in doubt between paper and digital, choose digital, because it will give you more flexibility and searchability of the notes you take. Next, focus less on taking notes and more on taking action. When you listen to someone speak, they may say wonderful and amazing things. But rather than focusing on the wonderful and amazing things that they say to you, focus more on the wonderful and amazing things that you say to you. What I mean is that there will be moments when the proverbial light bulb will go on over your head, and you will have an idea of something that you need to do. Those are the most important notes that you can take. When an idea comes to your mind of an action you should take, make a special note. Perhaps put a big open, unresolved checkbox next to it, or lots of stars, or circle it. Do something that communicates to you: here is something that I have told myself I need to do. The third tip is after taking your notes, process them. In particular, search for each action item you created and decide what we're going to do with it, when we're going to do it, and where its long term home for storage is. This processing should not occur in the moment of taking notes, but rather occur during a scheduled processing time. In Time Management Fundamentals, I recommend that the average person has about five hours a week. So, some time during that five hours, you're going to open up your notebook, look for all of the action items that you wrote down, and then decide what, when, and where for each item. As part of the where step, store that message, ideally in a digital folder, archive the notes, and, if you want, add tags to them to help make it easier to find in the future. By following these simple steps, you'll go from beyond just taking notes to taking action, and action is what productivity is all about.

Contents