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You should stop taking notes.
It’s the mental equivalent of busy-work, at best.
This might seem a weird thing for a paper-based thinking advocate to say, but it’s not, really. It’s more an extension of what the patron saint of productivity, David Allen, said: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”
I’m going to propose that “your notebook is not for taking notes. It’s for making and thinking about them.” Call it the “papermancy corollary.”
It’s not about the noun: notes. The problem is with the verb. Taking notes is a relatively passive action — often just the same as “taking dictation”. It’s meant to record what is said, not engage with it. Taking notes in a class or during a video is just writing down what you hear, and the more concerned you are with getting it down right, the less you can actually think about it.
The case for making notes. On paper.
When you make notes, as you are listening and reading and writing down your understanding of the information, it inspires more thoughts, more connections, and builds on the information you’re consuming.
The whole habit of transcribing word-for-word is based on a scarcity mentality that is no longer really necessary. You almost certainly have access to whatever it is the person is…
