Note-taking

4 Easy Ways To Improve Note-Taking (Plus 2 Common Mistakes To Avoid)

Note-taking is a skill everyone should learn.

Note taking (drawing by author)

You’ve always been good at taking notes, right? You’re the one with perfect memory, who doesn’t get flustered when a speaker spits out information like machine gun bullets?

Well, this isn’t for you, but for everyone else, here are tips that I’ve picked up over many years in lectures, business meetings, and courses. As a bonus, there are two common mistakes (that I’ve made too many times) to avoid at the end.

Adopt a methodology

You might be a note-taking genius who instinctively:

• instantly recognises all the important points
• can write everything down legibly at speed
• Always creates notes that can be understood three months later.

You might be, but you probably aren’t. It’s not something passed down in most people’s DNA.

The good news is that you’re not the first person to take notes, and that there are methodologies. If you adopt a methodology, you improve your chances of dealing with such note-taking hazards as:

• A speaker who makes a presentation as dense as a neutron…