Simple Effective not-taking Skills
Welcome to effective Note-Taking Skills. I’ve been asked by friends how do you remember things that happen in seminars, classrooms or even business meetings ? The answer is what I will summarise here using what many people do, perhaps not doing well. This article is for anyone who would like to improve their note-taking skills, In this article, we ‘re going to learn a variety of note-taking approaches for situations you may encounter. I’ll talk about how to take notes during a meeting, and how to create action plans. You’ll also learn techniques for brainstorming, so you can effectively get your ideas from your head onto the page and into action. Next, I’ll discuss how you can effectively take notes while reading. Learning these note-taking strategies will help you save time, improve your memory, and also make you much more productive at work. So let’s go ahead and get started.
Key To activate
One of the keys of effective note-taking is by becoming a good listener. How to become an active listener during a meeting. This could be a group meeting or class, where you are the participant or leader, or this can apply to one-on-one meetings as well. Listening is not a passive skill. It takes effort to actively listen. You might have probably experienced passive listening before, a situation where you spaced out while you were in school or when someone was talking to you, you heard the words but really understood much. That’s passive listening. Active listening requires focus, so you first need to make sure that you try to eliminate distractions. That may include turning off your phone or getting rid of your laptop if you absolutely don’t need it during the meeting. And I’m not just talking about putting your phone on vibration because even that can distract you from actively listening. I’ve heard of some companies that even collect cell phones at the door before the meeting starts just to ensure people don’t get distracted. Getting rid of distractions will help you listen with more focus. Active listening also requires the right kind of body language. Leaning in, nodding at the appropriate moments and maintaining eye contact are all great ways to stay attentive. Another key to listening is paraphrasing and repeating back what you heard, or to ask questions that clarify what’s being discussed. While you’re listening, you also want to be on the lookout for main points that are being discussed. Listen for statements like the thing to remember… is, or phrases like my point… is. These phrases should trigger you to pay more attention so you can listen more effectively. And of course, always try to let the person who’s talking finish rather than interrupting them. This is not just common courtesy, but it also ensures that you’re fully listening to them before making points of your own. So, if you keep these techniques in mind, you’ll become a more active listener, and therefore, a more effective note-taker.
Focusing on ideas instead of sentences
We’re going to cover how you can learn to take notes faster and more efficiently. The first thing you need to understand is that you should keep your notes concise. You want to be writing ideas not sentences. This is a simple way to speed up your note-taking, but it’s surprising how many people ignore this advice and try to write complete sentences while they’re taking notes. If you do this, you may end up missing major points that are being stated because you’re trying to write out what was previously said. So keep your notes on keywords and phrases. You can write now and edit later. Another important strategy is to only write down what’s absolutely necessary. Not everything is equally important. Many times there are two, three, or four major points being made. Don’t get bogged down with the details. If you’re paying attention, you’ll remember the details because the bigger concepts will trigger that information. If you want to add some of your own detail under a major point, but don’t have time to at the moment, just leave a little space there so you can add it later. Another way to be concise with your notes is to use abbreviations whenever possible. You’ll know what they stand for because you wrote them. For example, the word university could simply be abbreviated to U-N-I-V. Or the word government can be shortened to G-O-V-T. Get used to writing in abbreviated form if you want to speed up your note-taking. By abbreviating and using symbols, you’re essentially developing your own customised short-hand which is a process of taking notes quickly. It takes time to get used to it, but once you’ve decided on certain abbreviations and visuals, it can drastically speed up your note-taking. Also, don’t get hung up on grammar. It’ll slow you down and distract you from understanding the information you need to know.
Capturing the action plan
Every good meeting should end with an action plan. Otherwise, what’s the point of the next meeting? So it’s important that this action plan be reflected in the summary of your meeting minutes. In other words, some organisations require that meeting minutes include this sort of summary. Meeting minutes serve as a record of decisions that were made, what actions should be taken, and who must take them and when. Important meetings are held every day and the decisions made at these meetings can involve millions of money. And this is why the role of minute taker is so important. Meeting minutes drive action by providing a plan for you and your team. The minutes show how decisions were made, who made the decisions and when. By mapping out an action plan in the meeting minutes, you help ensure the work gets done. And the minutes can also provide an update to those who were unable to attend the meeting. Because the meeting minutes record important decisions, they serve as a great way to measure progress. You can use them as an accountability tool to make sure that progress is being made. Now don’t worry. Meeting minutes don’t have to be long and extremely detailed. Some can be short and to the point based on the nature of the meeting. Your meeting minutes can consist of a simple list of decisions made, actions that need to take place along with who is responsible for each action. And you can include dates for each action if they’re time-sensitive. Here’s an example of a meeting minutes document. A copy is available in the exercise files folder. Now there’s no strict format for the layout of meeting minutes, but this exercise file will give you a good idea of the general structure. First, you’ll notice at the top, you’ll take note of the company name and department. The next areas ask for the committee name, date of the meeting, the location.
Creating your Own note-taking system (The Cornell note-taking system)
Taking notes quickly can be a challenge, especially when lots of detailed information is being rapidly presented during a meeting / class with multiple people. If you need to keep up with all this information, you may want to consider taking notes using the Cornell system.
The Cornell system helps you organise your notes into two major columns using a standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch page. Start by drawing a horizontal line about four to six lines from the bottom of your page. If your paper doesn’t have any lines, draw this horizontal line about two to three inches from the bottom. Then, draw a vertical line about two inches from the left side of your page. The left column will be the area where you review your main points. On the right side column, which is larger, you’ll add more of your detailed notes. The bottom part of your page will be where you summarise the information as an action plan. On the top right-hand side of the page, you’ll want to add the subject matter of these notes. And again, you’ll be adding all your detailed notes in the right-hand column of your page. Be sure to keep your notes concise. You don’t have to use complete sentences. And whenever possible, use your own shorthand that you can understand. Abbreviate information so that you can keep up with the information. And don’t forget to skip a line between ideas. Once you’re done writing your notes, be sure to review them. Add the main ideas and the most important points on the left-hand side of the column. At the very bottom of your page, summarise the most important information as an action plan. Once you’re done, you may want to review your notes periodically so you can keep the information fresh in your head. Your first review of notes should occur within 24 hours. After that, the amount of times you review is up to you and based on how well you need to know the information. You can boost your long-term recall.
Brainstorming ideas collection
Let’s discuss how you can use the results of brainstorming as an alternative way to efficiently capture notes. Brainstorming can be done individually, or with a group, and it involves an informal approach to solving problems. It’s really a creativity technique that requires you or a group of people to create a list of spontaneous ideas. I will present you with four major guidelines for effective brainstorming.
One is to withhold judgement of other people’s ideas. This encourages everyone to contribute and think more creatively. Because the ideas are spontaneous, and sometimes just random, it usually makes brainstorming a pretty fun exercise.
The second major guideline for brainstorming is to focus on quantity. The more ideas that are generated, the more likely we’ll be able to solve the problems at hand.
The third guideline to effective brainstorming is that strange ideas should be welcomed and encouraged. These ideas can be created by looking at things from a new perspective, or making different assumptions.
The fourth and final guideline is to combine and improve ideas. This can happen during the brainstorming process, or afterward.
If you’re brainstorming with a group, you need to designate someone as the note-taker. They need to quickly and efficiently jot down all the ideas as they’re being stated. As we mentioned before, use abbreviations and symbols to speed up this process. You want to make sure you capture everything. If you’re doing this on your own, you still want to take notes quickly so you can keep up with your own thoughts. Sometimes ideas fly in and out of our head, so we need to capture them the moment they come along. If you’re working with a group brainstorming, here’s a nice variation that you might find helpful. Everyone in the group sits in a circle, and each person has to write down one idea on a sheet of paper. Each person then passes their idea along to the next person, who elaborates on the idea, adding some more thoughts of their own. This continues until everyone gets their original idea back.
Avoiding excessive highlighting
Note-taking while reading, and the potential dangers of excessive highlighting and too many notes. Have you ever bought or borrowed a used college textbook or any textbook at all, and noticed ridiculous amounts of highlighting? How does this happen?
Here’s how. Someone’s reading the chapter and maybe they need to know it very well for a test that’s coming up. They read a sentence and thought, this must be important so they highlight it. Then they read the next sentence and realise that’s also kind of important, and they highlight that as well. Then they read the third sentence, and now they realise this sentence is way more important than the previous two, maybe they’ll use a different colour this time around. You already see where this is going. Have you ever heard the phrase, “When you get caught “up in details, you lose sight of the big picture.”? This is one of the biggest issues when it comes to note-taking. People get caught up in details. A better way to handle this would be to finish reading the paragraph and then decide what you want to highlight or take notes on. And keep in mind, you don’t have to write out full sentences. You could highlight just a word or short phrase, and that would remind you what the section was about. For example, when I say the word “Katrina ‘’, ‘for those familiar with it, that will suggest… in mind, a hurricane. Rather than highlighting an entire sentence that discusses Hurricane Katrina and its effects on the city of New Orleans, you might instead highlight or take note of the word “Katrina” and that would be enough to remind you of the details. If you focus on nothing just a word or short phrase, you’ll be much more effective with your note-taking. So again, make sure you finish a paragraph at the very least before taking your notes. If you still feel like you’re spending too much time taking notes, you may even want to finish reading a section of text before taking notes.
Effective reading note-taking
An effective process for taking notes while reading business-oriented documents. This three-step process will help you read more efficiently by first getting you familiar with the material. This reading strategy is called The Multiple Reading Process. The first step in the process is called the Preview. During the step, you simply read the introduction and conclusion to the information you’re reading. If you’re reading a short article, this could simply be the first and last paragraph. If you’re reading something longer like a book chapter or a detailed blog post, this could be a few paragraphs at the beginning, and a few at the end. Keep in mind that the introduction and conclusion might be labelled as objectives or summary. Once you’re done with the step, you’re now ready to take some basic notes based on what you just read. Write down the first things that come to mind by answering this questions.
What was most memorable? And What is the main point of what you’re reading?
Keep your notes concise. Just a word or short phrase should be enough to remind you of the concept. And don’t worry if you don’t have tons of things to write down. You’ve only read the introduction and conclusion, so your notes should initially be pretty basic. Now we move on to step number two in the process. The Overview. In this step, you’ll want to read the headings, subheadings, and bold-faced words. Or if you don’t have headings, just read the first sentence of each paragraph since first sentences tend to be main ideas. Once you’re done with this, take some more notes. At this point, you’ll be taking note of the big ideas that were present in the text. Rather than just copying each of the headings, I’d suggest initially writing things down on the top of your head. This is much better for your memory because you’re forcing yourself to remember.
Using Mind mapping
Have you ever taken notes that ended up looking something like a jumbled up mess? It’s very difficult to review notes that have the following, looking at how easy it is to find specific information?
Outlines are also very linear in that they assume roman numeral number two comes after roman numeral number one. These notes are most appropriate for information that runs in a specific sequence, like history, or for instructional information that may contain a step one, step two and so on. But for many other topics, the information is non-linear. Meaning it doesn’t have to be in a set specific order. The topics of business, law, physics, medicine, are all non-linear in that you don’t have to follow one specific order to understand them. They might be presented in a certain order, but for you to understand the information, you don’t need to remember it in a set order. You just need to know that all of the concepts and details are associated with a single topic. A great way to organise non-linear information is to take notes visually. Mind maps are a great example of this. Mind maps consist of a central idea in the middle. If you were taking notes while reading, this might be the title of your chapter with nodes extending from that central idea. Their surrounding boxes or bubbles could be headings and subheadings within your chapter, or main points from the material you were reading. Mind maps can include colour and other visuals to help you remember even more effectively. It’s kind of having a bird’s eye view of the information, and later if you need to review the information it’s very easy to see the structure and detail. And also how the information is associated. The reason that mind maps are so effective at helping you remember things is because they reflect the way your mind really works. Just make sure your note taking reflects the way in which the information is structured. Regardless of how you end up taking notes, the most important thing is you being able to remember.
The read and recall method
Have you ever read a whole page of text and then wondered I have no clue what I just read. Now, I’ll go over a simple exercise you can practise so this doesn’t happen as often. It’s called the Read and Recall Method, and it will help you remember more of what you read. Here’s how it works. You read a paragraph and then, take a quick note of what you just read. Then you simply repeat this process, read a paragraph, take a note. Read another paragraph, take another note. These notes should be quick. Just write a word or a phrase that describes some of the content in that paragraph. Why are we doing this? The idea is to get you into the mindset of the author rather than constantly asking yourself, “What did I just read?” If you force yourself to take a quick note after every paragraph you read, you’ll find yourself paying more attention to the material. And with practice, you’ll improve your ability to retain the information. Now I’m not suggesting that you need to take notes after every paragraph you read for the rest of your life. This is simply an exercise you can practise to improve your recall abilities. If you feel like you have a lot of trouble remembering what you read, I’d suggest practising this 15 minutes a day for a week, if you want to strengthen your recall abilities. With practice, you’ll find it easier to remember what you’re reading, because you’ll be in the habit of constantly thinking, “what the author meant instead of what did I just read?” Part of the reason why we forget information is because sometimes we weren’t paying attention to begin with. The Read and Recall Method helps you pay attention because it forces you to take notes after every paragraph. If I know I need to write something down, then I’m more likely to pay attention while I’m reading. It’s a simple but effective exercise for improving your retention. And here’s a little variation of this method that you can apply to online courses, pdf and physical books. Most of the time I use the Google Keep app to jot down the summary, otherwise use other methods like comment in pdf apps. Instead of the Read and Recall Method, let’s call it the Watch and Recall Method.
- Congratulations, you’ve reached the end. So, where should you go from here? Reading this is just one part of the learning process. The other part is to actively apply what you’ve learned. So I’d suggest organising your note-taking softwares, by searching on the internet or simply using Google Keep which is cross platform and for mind maps. I recommend Xmind also because they have customizable templates. That’s the easiest way to start applying what you’ve learned. If you’ve been taking notes offline or using somewhat else, this is the perfect time to go review these notes. This will strengthen your recall of this Article and any others. Note-taking aids your memory, so be sure to apply the strategies you have learnt. It’ll help you live a more memorable and productive life. Thanks.
