Why aren't you taking down more notes?

Why aren’t enough people taking down notes? In meetings, at conferences or during a course? How do we expect to remember everything we consume?

It’s such a basic requirement for any job role but it’s so underappreciated and underrated that no one is incentivised to do it. This also contributes to meetings becoming useless.

1) Don’t fret the medium, just take notes “Damn, no laptop”, “Oh no, I forgot my favourite pen” are not excuses to skip taking notes. Find something, a pen, a whiteboard, your notes app.

2) Identifying key items take time Note taking is like any other skill, it takes practice. Your first few meeting notes might be too short or too long. Both are useless. Over time, you’ll master extracting only things that matter

3) Notes @ Courses & Conferences These mediums cram so much diverse knowledge into a short span of time. IMPOSSIBLE to retain without notes. So if you don’t have notes, that’s time wasted :)

4) Notes should be instantly shareable When asked to share notes, most ppl spend time cleaning it up. Don’t do that. Learn to take down notes with proper formatting, alignment etc.

5) Revisit notes randomly You’ll never know what new insights you’re going to gain out of it. Your own understanding of something might have evolved.