The Noble Art Of Note-Taking

Whether jotting down a message or penning your tutor’s every word, note-taking is everywhere. While the skill is traditionally synonymous with educational settings, and it’s undoubtedly pertinent for students, note-taking isn’t just common to classrooms. Note-taking is a means of recording a moment, a thought, an idea at a specific point in time which cannot be revisited – and thanks to this skilled art, you can return to a notion once past.

Why Take Notes?

The traditional concept of note-taking may seem outdated in our increasingly digital communities; why bother taking notes, or putting pen to paper, when everything is recorded for us? Meetings, lectures, and even private conversations, are almost always traceable somewhere, if not recorded and stored in accessible data. There’s no escaping the digital revolution, and no denying its usefulness, but it arguably encourages apathy when it comes to communicative, pro-active skills such as note-taking.

Attentive And Alert

Taking notes encourages you to keep focused and stay engaged with your environment. By recording your observations in real time, your attention is directed, enabling you to fully engage with your experience. The process can help to keep your concentration, digest the information, and prevent your mind wandering elsewhere.

Stimulate Ideas

Maintaining your engagement with your surroundings means you’re more able to make a valuable contribution, as the content you are absorbing may trigger questions, ideas or thoughts you can share, and record – ones which may otherwise be lost or missed by not truly focusing your attention at the time. This is crucial for developing your own critical thinking and insights, and can encourage the same from your peers, sparking critical conversations and discourse.

Preservation

Taking notes is akin to time travel; your notes can operate as a time capsule of information, knowledge, thoughts and ideas which can serve multiple purposes in future. Whether revising, reflecting, clarifying, resolving or retrieving, your notes will be of use at a later point, and you’ll be relieved due to your diligence.

Note-Taking Methodology

Like many other skills, note-taking is one that takes practice. Refining the art will help you capture the most worthy content.

Tools Of The Trade

While this skill may be traditional in concept, the tools you use need not be. Effective note-taking is only successful when you equip yourself with the tools you prefer. While there’s an abundance of pens, pencils and notepads, the digital catalogue of note-taking tools is also boundless. Overall, though, whatever you find the easiest, most seamless method of taking the clearest notes, is best.

Comprehension Is Key

It is a common misconception that note-taking is merely copying down as many words as possible from whatever you may be reading or listening to, but this folly will only result in recording futile information You are likely to fall behind, lose momentum, and find gaps in such notes, which will not make sense. Pick out what’s important or interesting, and structure your notes with headings, subheadings, shapes and symbols to indicate relevance, meanings and signals about the information that make sense to you. There are no rules!

Review And Reflect

Review your notes as soon as possible after the event to ensure they are as accurate as possible. With the content still fresh in your mind, you will be able to identify any gaps or errors in your notes and correct them, as well as highlight any points to follow up with. Actioning any queries with your notes in a timely fashion will consolidate the information in your mind and ensure your notes are in great shape for your reference at a later date.

Fundamentally, note-taking is a valuable life skill that enables us to retain part of a moment. There’s a great nobility to conjuring the detail and content of the past in a different form, as, to quote Michael Hyatt: ‘Great notes are the closest thing to a time machine we will ever get’. It’s pretty important to ensure they are, at least, readable.

References
Michael Hyatt, Your Own Personal Time Machine. Recovering the Lost Art of Note Taking (fullfocus.co)

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