Everyday we encounter a lot of things. days become weeks, weeks becomes months, and months become years. Let’s go back to last week, do you remember what you did last week? Is there something interesting happened? Do you note it down somewhere? In your notes, in the tools that you have, or any other place? Have you ever think “oh, I wish I remember about that…” ? I often experience that. Especially when I’m in the middle of something or a bit of pondering. I guess our brain has the capability of making us to remember something that have forgotten.
I’m not a note taking kind of person. Even though, I’ve known that we can only remember a few things only at a time. I haven’t learn much from what I encountered. Recently, the situation force me to write or make notes again. There are a lot of requests coming in from different customers and my supervisors and I can’t remember everything.
I hope you are not experiencing the same thing. Here are 5 motivation for taking notes:
1. Remember the purpose of note taking
Often times, my perfectionism kicks in and I feel that I need to create a system to write. And that’s when I spend time in researching rather than to write. And when the time comes, i spend many times testing the tools instead of actually writing. And at the moment seems that switching from one tool to another make me lost. I’m not sure where I write for a particular note.
Remember, the whole reason you want to write because you want to write. Be it a meeting agenda, something that you learn, personal journal, or anything that you like. To keep me motivated, I try to write things that occur to me during writing time. There’s a time especially during a long meeting or boring seminar or even interesting seminar. If I’m sleepy or bored, I’ll write it down to say that I’m sleepy. Or when I thought of a good analogy that is different from the meeting, I’ll try to write it down so that I’m able to personalize it. it won’t be for the whole meeting, but only for a short while so that I can so called pull myself together to keep engaged.
2. Any tool is perfect.
You can find a literal notebook to write things down. Or you can write in your agenda, Microsoft OneNote, Evernote, etc. It can be anything. I learn my lesson to keep just a few tools. It doesn’t matter how expensive the tool is, as long as you’re not using it, it is useless. Think about tools that you want to use. What’s the important things that you need to have to write? it might be many things, but list the top 2-3 important things for this. for my use, I can say only 2 things: ease of use and low distraction.
For me, I use regular notebook and Evernote. There are some occasions when I found that writing is better for me. Although my handwriting is not good, but I found that in a conference call, or a learning session, I can write things faster than typing. So in this situation, I use normal notebook. On all other situation, I use Evernote. Evernote is good because it comes with low distraction and you can build it to match with what you need. Even with the free version, you can create many notebook and 10,000 notes. And trust me, it is a lot. Give Evernote a try. If you haven’t create an account, you can click on the link below to get a taste of premium feature. I can say that Evernote is simple enough for anyone who knows typing can use, and complicated enough to cater on what you need for your heavy writing job. The best part, you can scan your bills, bank statements as a pdf or image file and even your notes, to evernote. after you sync it, not sure how long will it take, but it usually within 5 minutes, you can search the text within those scanned copy. It is a useful feature for me. If you have neat handwriting, you’ll love it. You can safe all your writing electronically.
3. Don’t think whether it will be useful or not.
I suggest not to think too much on what you need or don’t need to write. Just write it. You’ll be surprised when you find your note someday and there’s something that reminds you on the good days or even encourage you. One of the useful things to write is your goals and dreams. It will help you to remember and raise the possibilities for you to achieve it.
That’s also the reason why it’s good to digitalize your writing too, if you write things down. Harddisk space is getting cheaper and cheaper this day. And there’s a lot of service that will help you safe your note online.
4. Review your greatest thinking .
The notes that you write down might not be for others, but it’s just for you. So, take time to review it. It could be some tools you found online, or some ‘aha’ moment that you encounter. It can be anything. I know some notes seems useless. You’ll never know when to use it. If you have doubt about it, note it down first. If it’s useless, you can delete it in the future.
I found that some notes worth to be reviewed. After you write it, you might miss something. Either tasks to do, good quotes that you found, or any other things. That’s why you need to review. During this time when I was forced to write, I found my old notes and it was good. It reminds me in what I have done and also some good encouraging articles to motivate me in what I’m doing. I found on some articles that it is good to have regular review. At least once a week. I found it true for me too. It help me to remember what has been discussed to prepare what I need to do and to review the good thinking that I have encounter during the week. If it’s longer than that, I’ll take more time to review. So it is better to have it regularly so that you’ll spend just a bit of time to give you better perspective
5. The power of now
I found that people are more generous in sharing information in social media. i checked mainly Facebook and twitter once in a while. and sometimes i found a good articles and videos. i thought to myself that it was good, and move on. a few days later i was thinking about that article and i couldn’t find it anymore. I don’t even remember who shared it nor the title. i tried to search through Google or any search site, and i still couldn’t find it. Have you ever feel that way? I over estimate the power of people sharing and the available information online.
You might share the article through your own timeline. If it works for you, that’s good. I like to safe the good article in one source, which is Evernote. But I learn my lesson that just like time, we can’t go back to that exact moment to take extra look to know about the title and/or who share it. It’s more like opportunity, once you missed it, you missed it. Although you can try to find it again, but you’ll spend more time in finding it. because you and I forgot to save the information ‘now’.
Note taking, even though it’s an old skill, it’s never gets old. you might not buy in this idea of note taking. But try it for a while. I’m sure you’ll be surprised on what you’ll get. It might not now, but when you have accumulated a lot of notes and you accidentally found your notes several or many many years back you’ll find gold in that piece of notes.
Question: What motivates you to write? be it about journal, meeting minutes, etc. how do you motivates yourself to write stuff down. Any tips on how you write?
“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.” —Jim Tully
Resources:
– Evernote
