TAKE NOTES!

Boring meetings, only one more coffee away from heart attack and yet another hour to go? And then another Skype call, another session in the conference room?

I hear you. There’s a simple trick to stay on track, make sense out of the scenario you’re in and most importantly to not go bonkers. You may have guessed it already: take notes!

When I’m talking about notes, you may yawn once more. But I’m not talking about trying to keep up with the speaker and to note down full sentences. Rather than trying to jot down every word, try to focus on the essentials and do fun stuff to spice things up:

• write clear headlines and sub-headlines to organize content
• focus on the main information, important ideas and concepts only
• jot down buzz words instead of sentences
• leave enough space to add important information whenever it shows up
• use arrows to mark relations and connections between the words
• add fun drawings and colors after you noted down the main idea, for example while the details are being explained

Tadaaaah! Yes, it is that easy. The aim is to create notes that help you stay present, capture information in a way that is clear, easy to understand and allows you to find the important stuff in the blink of an eye. Scribbling will help you to stay on track, activate both brain hemispheres and boost your memory by using your spatial sense, too. Besides, if your notes look like this, it’s more fun to go through them again.

This is an example of my notes. In Hamburg, I attended a crowdfunding workshop held by Hamburger Kreativgesellschaft introducing „nordstarter„, a platform to fund Hamburg-based projects. During the whole afternoon, I scribbled and took real time notes. No more than those two double pages. That’s it.

The content was in German so the notes are too. However, it’s a fun and recent example of how I use visuals to stay on track, remember and share to help others remembering the important stuff, too.

If you have tipps and tricks you’d love to share or even an example of how you’re taking notes, I’d love to read it and see a picture in the comments below.