Michael Hyatt,
president of Thomas Nelson
Publishers, has recently posted an article about note-taking titled Recovering
the Lost of Art of Note-Taking. I agree with his premise: taking
effective notes is an art. The article contains the following main
points about note-taking in meetings:
1) Note-taking enables you to stay engaged.
2) Note-taking
provides a mechanism for capturing your ideas, questions, and commitments.
3)
Note-taking communicates the right things to the other attendees.
He also adds the following helpful hints for making your notes more
effective:
1) Use a journal-formatted notebook.
2) Keep your meeting notes as a running
journal.
3) Use symbols so you can quickly scan your notes later.
4)
Schedule time to review your notes.
I'm involved in several meetings a week. I find that taking notes during the
meetings definitely helps me to stay actively engaged in the conversation taking
place. Like Mr. Hyatt, I've found that using pen and paper is the most effective
method for me to capture my thoughts before, during and after meetings. I may
transfer some of these notes to computer at some point, but I typically keep all
of my notes on paper. For me, the additional overhead of maintaining a separate
application for notes isn't worth it for the added ease of use that this
approach might provide me. I've found this is also true for jotting down ideas
and other information not related to my meetings. For this type of stuff, I keep
a separate notebook that I'm trying to train myself to keep around at all times
so that when an idea strikes me or I need to remember something, I can jot that
information down.