Want to Take Better notes?
Why Most People Take Useless Notes (And How Not to Be One of Them)
A Simple Twist That Can Boost Your Way of Managing Information
Many people take notes. But only a minority is world-class at it.
Let me explain:
I’ve been taking notes for ten years and realized that I was dumping a lot of information into my note-taking apps without revisiting it.
Here’s what my way of taking notes looked like:
1. Consuming information
2. Be alerted by something interesting
3. Pulling out my phone (or taking a pen and paper)
4. Writing it down
5. Maybe classifying it with a tag or a folder
6. Going ahead with my day
This is what most people do.
But the real question to ask is what comes next. What comes after taking notes?
For most of us, this is an embarrassing question.
If you take the time to answer it, you’ll notice that the ratio of saving vs. re-using our notes is disproportionate.
We save too much and use too less.
In other words, we consume a lot of information without really taking the time to re-engage with it on a deeper level.
Dumping information into our notes makes us feel good. (Noticed, I said “feel”). You’re experiencing a feeling. An emotional satisfaction when saving (or, to be more accurate: collecting).
Because yes, we collect notes rather than utilizing them to their full potential.
But a good feeling isn’t always good for you. Ask drug addicts.
When you see that you’re saving more notes than re-engaging with them, you should start re-thinking your notes. Seriously.
You see, saving without re-engaging is just a waste of time and energy.
It will make cloud storage and note-taking app companies happier — but won’t add much to your life.
Do You Want to Take Better Notes?
If you can relate to what I’ve described here, then I have something for you:
