Taking Notes has Compounding Effects on your Productivity
Consistently taking notes can enable you to produce beautiful volumes that serve as reference works.
One researcher famous for his extensive system of note taking was the sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998). Luhmann built up an organization of some 90,000 index cards for his research, and credited it for enabling his extraordinarily prolific writing (including over 70 books and 400 scholarly articles)¹.
The growing ubiquity of personal computers has led to a rise in electronic note-taking. Features like universal search, sophisticated organization, and cross-device synchronization have made note taking even more valuable. Recalling what you learned, thought, and did is very useful. Well organized notes augment your intelligence.
Here are my 7 habits for highly effective noting taking.
Table of Contents
1. Take Notes on Everything
2. Make Your Notes Beautiful
3. Stay Organized
4. Be Quick by Using Hotkeys
5. Take Notes Everywhere
6. Protect Your Notes
7. Paper Notes are Still Relevant
1. Take Notes on Everything
- Master To Do — Have one place to track and prioritize tasks.
- Work Projects — To do lists, people on the team, summarise links to important materials, ideas, research, work in progress, etc.
- Vacations
- Hobbies
- Passwords — Encrypt this note (see section 6 for more info).
- Places (ex. home, cottage, parent’s house, etc.) — Address, WiFi login, insurance, routine maintenance, and improvement ideas.
- People — For important colleagues collect the things they say, things you’ve done together, and ideas for the future.
- Devices (ex. laptop, TV, camera, vehicle, etc.) — Model, specs, price, and customizations of the device.
- Software tools (ex. Python, ElasticSearch, JQ json parser, etc.) — Common commands, errors, solutions, and links to online resources.
- Jokes — Favourite jokes and funny sayings. Review this note before going to a party or on a date to get in the right mood.
- Addresses — Where you’ve lived or where family members live. Useful for sending gifts.
- Birthdays and Gift Ideas — Birthdays of family and friends. Record gift ideas even when birthdays are months away.
- Taxes — Record donations, investments, who you worked for, etc. This will help you file taxes at the end of the year.
- Thoughts on X — Journal thoughts on life, love, and specific interests.
- Lessons Learned — Miscellaneous concepts learned or mistakes made that don’t fit anywhere else.
- Motivation — How you stay happy and productive. Re-read as needed.
- Accomplishments — Life milestones and company specific achievements.
2. Make Your Notes Beautiful
Beauty arises from the orderly arrangement of parts. Beautiful notes are easier to remember and more enjoyable to re-read.
- Colors and layout — A little bit goes a long way.
- To do lists (imaged below)
- Tables for structure (imaged below)
- Paste with Source Formatting or Text Only — Choose to keep style or remove it when pasting text. (Ctrl, K or Ctrl, T)
- Copy-paste styles — Quickly apply beautiful styles. (Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+C)
- Format Painter — Another way to copy and paste beautiful styles within your notes.
- Clear formatting — Quickly remove text style.
- PDFs — Export to PDF to share your beautiful notes with others.
3. Stay Organized
- Table of Contents — I use a free plugin for OneNote to generate Tables of Contents (imaged above).
- Growing Notes — Add important additions at the top and everything else at the bottom.
- Dates — Keep track of when you wrote things (right click, insert current date).
- Duplication — Do not copy the same text in two different notes. Copy links to paragraphs (imaged below).
4. Be Quick by Using Hotkeys
Hotkeys save you time and provide special abilities. Hotkeys makes work more enjoyable and leads to more polished results. The key combinations are for OneNote but any good note taking app should have equivalents.
Find Notes Faster
I put keywords into note titles to improve searching. Here are my favourite hotkeys to find and view notes.
Style Notes Faster
Apply styles quickly and you’ll love the results.
Write Notes Faster
Cursor movement skills are essential and work in any application.
Other Speed Boosts
- Right-click without a mouse — Shift+F10.
- Fast Spelling Correct — If the word has a red underline then right-click it (or Shift+F10), press down, and then enter. This will choose the first spelling suggestion.
- Type the underscored letter to make a menu or prompt selection — Alt may also be needed (imaged below).
5. Take Notes Everywhere
- Meetings
- Conferences
- Commuting with your phone or tablet
- In the shower for those shower thoughts… just kidding!
6. Protect Your Notes
Make sure to enable password protection for notes containing sensitive information like passwords, personal details, and business information. These notes should be encrypted and only temporarily unlocked using the password.
Secondly, backup your notes by exporting them to a backup drive or a secondary cloud. The wealth of information in your notes is too great to lose.
7. Paper Notes Are Still Relevant
Paper notes have no distractions and are better for sketching visual ideas. Some notes are not worth keeping in your electronic notebook like early ideation. Your immediate to do lists are more helpful on a pad of paper that never leaves your sight. Transcribing notes from paper to computer is an opportunity for refinement. Or, take a picture of a paper note and put it into your electronic notebook.
Conclusion
I’ve been taking copious notes for almost 10 years. My personal collection of guides and memories provide a wealth of inspiration and expertise to direct into my future projects.
Take notes and flourish! 🎉
[1] Schmidt, Johannes. “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine”. In Cevolini, Alberto (ed.). Forgetting Machines : Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe (PDF). pp. 289–311.
