I loved this piece from Fast Company, “Why Productive People Take Better Notes. As a student if effective living, these sorts of articles grab my attention.
Ah, notes…glorious notes! I’ve been an avid note taker most of my life. The hints here include a few I already use, and some clever ideas that need to incorporate.
My main note taking tool has long been pen & notebook. My favorite combo is moleskine and a good pen. Yet Evernote is another favorite tool. I’ve combined the two for quite sometime now. Sometimes I’ll take notes directly into Evernote. Often, for many reasons, I’ll opt to write out the notes and then enter them into Evernote. Evernote’s strength, to me, is the ability to search, quickly. Also, I have it installed on all my computing devices: iPhone, tablet, work & home computer, and I can access via the web.
Oddly, though, I prefer to read from my pen & paper notebooks. Searchability aside, reading is more pleasurable to me in paper. This keeps me using this tandem system.
There is an additional benefit to this. By taking a few minutes to review notes before, and them typing them, it refreshes and renews the information. Drives it deeper into my mind, transferring it into long-term memory.
I like the suggestion of taking multicolored pens during review. Sounds brilliant! It’s these little tricks I love. Do you have any?
