In this week’s ProductivityCast episode, Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art voiced their thoughts on note-taking—the value of note-taking, methods we use, and tips and tricks for taking notes in different contexts.
Note: I say that we're covering note-taking methodologies in this episode, but we will actually be discussing those in the next several episodes, so stay tuned.
Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!
If you'd like to continue discussing A Love Letter to Note-Taking, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).
In this Cast | A Love Letter to Note-Taking
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | A Love Letter to Note-Taking
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
OneNote
Workflowy
Cornell Note-Taking Method
Mind Mapping
3 Best Note-Taking Methods
Common Note-taking Methods
7 Most Efficient Note Taking Methods
Evernote
FreeMind/Mind42
Raw Text Transcript
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
Read More
Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:22 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade 0:23I'm Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks 0:24 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we're going to be talking about some fundamentals in the productivity world. And that is note taking. What I'd like us to do today is for us to talk about why we take notes that is we around the roundtable here at ProductivityCast, why we take notes, why maybe you should take notes. And then what I'd like for us to do is do a survey, kind of an overview of the top five or so, note taking methods that we know about and or use or have used in the past. And that will hopefully help you get a better understanding about how to take notes better. And so let's start off with why take notes. What is the what is the reason for taking notes, and I will step outside of that answer for just a moment to note that the note taking space, that is the industry around notes is roughly a billion dollar industry and is supposed to grow to about $1.3 billion by 2026. So in just under, you know half a decade, we're gonna see this explosion of the note taking software market, this is just in software, we're not even talking about paper planners, which is another multi, you know, billion dollar industry. And it's really interesting to see that note taking software is so popular, even though note taking itself is not the most sexy topic that people really think about when they think about productivity. It's just one of those things that kind of rests into the background. But it's something that I think all of us do, in some way, shape or form. And I'm curious why you take notes, what was the impetus for you to start taking notes? And why do you take notes? And what do you take notes of today?
Art Gelwicks 2:01Well, for me, it's pretty straightforward. It's because I can't remember everything. And it's for the things that I need to remember. And it will, when I think about notes, everything goes back to academic note taking we think about scholastic note taking and all that lovely note taking we had to do back then, but it carries forward. And part of the challenge that I run into with notes and note taking. And the reason why I'm doing it is now professionally, I do it for reference after the fact, again, things I can't remember and shouldn't be trying to remember. Secondly, it's for historical record of conversations and activities. And thirdly, and this is where I really struggle with a little bit. It's to provide context across different sets of notes, where discussions happen around different topics that are related to each other or similar to be able to go back and revisit those and say, Okay, well wait, maybe there's something else deeper here. But no taking in and of itself, I have yet to find a way that actually lends itself for that. I mean, there's other methodologies and things. But when you sit there during a call during a meeting, during your discussion, whatever, and you're just capturing stuff, you have to commit yourself to the fact that later on, you're either going to have to go back and rewrite this and reorganize it, or it's just going to sit there in a notebook or in a file or in the cloud somewhere. And you're probably never going to do anything with it. And
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:21I think that's one of the number one reasons why you would structure notes in and with a method so that you're able to actually identify what it is that is useful in and during some event that forces you to take notes whether that event is solo or with others.
Art Gelwicks 3:37Thanks. So also, I mean, the one thing I didn't call out there is a lot of times you take notes for other people, you take notes to share with other individuals. And that's almost even harder, because your structure and their structure may be completely unrelated. So they look at your notes and they go, What the heck is this mess, but you realize that you have all the context and the information you need. It's just the approach and how you visualize it is different now that
Augusto Pinaud 3:59you mentioned that I really feel bad for whoever need to look at my notes and reference. For me notes is a similar you know, it is my way to make sure that I understand what was discussed and more importantly for me, what are the projects and actions that come in out of that discussion. You know, as Art said, my my memory can't remember that not only that I learned many years ago that the mind is great for certain things, but not for that. So notes for me has has a simple process and it's a way to remember and I use markers through my notes so that way sometimes just the fact that I took the notes is enough and I don't need to go back other than to pull actions away. So I make sure that I mark I am a big proponent of the Cornell Method so that way I could pull actions out of that if I am doing it by myself and they used to be my maps and then the mind map same thing. I mark easily for me to just look without need the need of reading, I know what are the places that I need to go to pull it, I think
Francis Wade 5:05of note taking in sort of falling in three different buckets. One is for prospective memory, which is essentially next next actions, time demands, tasks, things that I need to do in the future. And I treat those very differently than I do notes that are for prospective member retrospective memories are, which is stuff that I'm trying to remember, and not forget, versus stuff that came into my awareness, I have no chance of remembering, but I need to retrieve at a later point. So I'm not trying to retrieve to remember, I'm actually storing it so that I can forget, forget, in the sense that I can't, I don't want to be able to retrieve it, I just want it to be available. So those three, those three notes may be mixed into the same page, but they're doing three different jobs. And from the moment and I treat them differently, I'll say
Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:56that I started out my academic world with the idea that I didn't need to take notes, I really felt as though I was against the topic as a as a as a youth purely because I, I was brought up in in the mindset that you know, you're smart, and smart kids don't work hard, you should not need to work hard. And it was actually a really terrible cultural component, I think it still is, you know, when you tell children who are who are brighter than average, that they're smart, it tells them not to work hard. And so I would go through all kinds of sessions in school. And I would not take notes purely because I thought that I had to pay close attention. And only by paying close attention was I going to be able to recall everything. And remarkably, I just happen to have a very good memory. And so for many years that served me, and then scholastic duties expanded, and that started to fail. So I got my Trapper Keeper out and decided to use the note, you know, the notebook in it, for purposes of taking notes. And that's when I really started to feel like, wow, this is so simple. If I just take notes, then I can reference them again. And nobody cared. Nobody cared that I was taking notes. It wasn't like Johnny over my shoulder saying, oh, ravens taking notes, nobody cared. And, you know, that was, for some reason, there was this cultural component I just that I that I understood at a very young age. And for some reason, that made me not take notes. And going into the place where then I started to take notes, I recognize the value from that very early age that just that one twist of saying, Wait, I'm not capable of remembering everything that's happening in class, I can't remember all these signs, the teachers telling me, there was a point where I think probably in Bali, fifth or sixth grade, moving from elementary school to junior high school, that's the way the New York school systems work. I,
