One quick tip to take better notes from live events and meetings

Not all notes are created equal.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that you go back to some of your notes and feel enlightened, while others look like the mad ramblings of a drunk monkey.

There’s a lot to taking better notes but here is a tiny tip I learned from master note taker Sonke Ahrens that will help you create notes that are useful when you come back to them later.

Add a three point summary to the end of your notes

Live notes often end up with lots of excess information as you don’t know where the talk is going.

So instead of having concise notes that follow a logical path, you have a mess of information. These types of notes are harder to read later on.

A three point summary at the end helps you

• Makes you revisit the information and entrench it into your memory
• identify the key points for yourself
• provides a key and filter to go back through your notes
• It works for other notes too

Adding a summary doesn’t just help live notes though. It also helps when you take notes on a book or your thoughts. By trying to distill a bulk of information into a succinct summary, you will ensure you understand the information and help entrench it into your memory.

Ready to take better notes?

So give it a try, next time you take notes of a meeting, webinar or event:

1. Leave a space at the start

2. take notes as normal

3. add a three point summary or key takeaways at the start.

This post was created with Typeshare