How to Be Note-Free: 4 Tips to Unburden Yourself of Notes from Meetings, Calls & Conferences
“What do I do with all my notes?”
That’s a common question I get from my clients when I coach and consult with them on their productivity at work. How to use pads of paper, Post-it Notes®, and Planners can be perplexing and what to do with scribbled notes, meeting notes and conference notes can be puzzling.
In addition to discussing the notes themselves, I always ask about the reason for the notes in the first place, so think about why you’re taking your notes and how they’ll be useful to you later.
1. Reduce what you use
I recommend using a small legal pad (or other small pad) for phone call notes to make it easier for you to process the information quickly and tear off the page when you’re finished.
I recommend using a letter-size legal pad for notes from meetings and conferences, although if you need help remembering to take fewer notes, use a smaller pad!
Make sure you take notes on separate pages if they’re for different clients, meetings, topics or purposes. This will allow you to separate your notes easily by tearing off the pages and filing them in different files.
2. Do it now
The best step after taking any notes is to review them immediately. After you get off the phone or return from a meeting look to see what you’ve written. Process the information right away while it’s fresh in your mind.
Contact information goes into your Contact system, calendar information goes on the Calendar, tasks go on your Task list, client notes can go in their client files, etc… Make sure everything goes where it needs to go so you can either cross it out, toss it out or tear off the page and file it, leaving the pad ready for the next call or meeting.
3. Quality, not quantity
When attending a meeting or a conference, think about your role in the meeting, your purpose for going to the conference and what you need to take away from these various types of gatherings.
The first thing I want you to do is take fewer notes. Sometimes you write notes in meetings to give you something to do, to help you remember things or to keep you awake. While only one of those reason 1.Reduce what you use is worth of note-taking, they all just give you something to manage later on if you’re not careful, so think quality, not quantity.
4. Lightbulbs
If your notes hold great ideas, make sure you have a file set up for each category of ideas, either physically or electronically. For instance, Marketing Ideas, Sales Tips, Business Development Ideas, Writing, Advertising or any type of idea you commonly have and want to keep track of.
For example, if you collect ideas for “Marketing,” you may gather your ideas from a newspaper, a magazine, an on-line blog, a meeting, a conference or elsewhere, but keep them all in one file after you’ve printed them or torn them out of a magazine, newspaper, or off your legal pad.
You won’t have to wonder, “Where did I read about that great marketing idea? Was it from my XYZ Magazine? Or from the conference last year? Or was it from last week’s meeting?”
You shouldn’t have to remember where it came from or when you heard or read it. Simplify. All you need to know is that any great idea for marketing is captured and stored in one file called “Marketing Ideas” and when you’re ready for them, you’ll know exactly where to look.
The next time you’re about to take notes or you’re reviewing your notes after a phone call, meeting or conference, keep these tips in mind. And the BIG question to ask is will I actually refer to these notes in the future? If not, you know where they go!
