Me too and I’ve been working on a system for note taking and it’s really helped me to take more effective notes.

I was in a meeting the other day and walked away with 2 pages of notes. As we ended the meeting I noticed I was the only with notes from the meeting. This was just your run of the mill average meeting but it left wondering why I was the only one with notes.

Good note taking skills should be an integral part of any productivity system.

Note taking is a form of capturing information. It’s vital to get this step right since you have projects and actions hanging on these notes.

The first step in being productive is to capture.

The mandatory information:

• Date/Location/Present/Re: In a week you will most likely forget who was present, when it was, why you had the meeting and where it was. Write it down now!

What you want to make note of:

• Decisions made: This is a must. In fact it’s one of the primary reasons to take notes. Documenting what was decided is essential to capture.
• Important comments: Was there any information that is critical to this project? Make a note of it for reference later. I note important comments with a !. This makes scanning notes for important information easy.
• Tasks: What tasks were assigned to you to do. This is very important to clearly note what you have committed to doing.
• Follow ups: Was something assigned to another team member? Does it affect your project? Make a note of who it was and what it was and follow up on it.

I always use paper to capture my meeting notes. I never have to think about how to capture notes. I have several notepads setup and ready at a moment’s notice to capture notes.

I love the action method products. I find there system and yes it is an actual system, fits in perfectly with how I take notes. I broke down the system in this blog post : Turn your notes into action! I enter all my tasks and follow ups in section 1 the action steps section.

How to process the notes:

Note: If I don’t have time to process my notes at that moment I put them in my inbox to process later.

• Double check the mandatory information. Did you get the Date/Location/Present/Re: stuff correct?
• Look for critical/important reference information. Remember the ! Here’s where its really helpful to use that system.
• Review tasks assigned to you and enter them into your productivity system. If I can do them right now I check them off.
• Review follows ups and enter them in your productivity system. Same as I do with tasks, if I can do them right now I check them off.
• Scan the notes into Evernote and tag with @meeting notes tag for easy retrieval later.

Quick tip for creating the note in Evernote:

I title all my notes like this: (This way is sorts by date and I have the project name and who I met with in the title of the note)

2015.02.20 – Project Name Mtg with

It should be noted that “official typed” meeting notes may need to be distributed to all attendee’s. Especially when approvals or budgets are involved this practice can save a lot of headaches later. Also the notes should clearly outline expectation (tasks) of the people at the meeting. Remember don’t rely on people to do what they say or are asked to do. Make sure to have your own waiting for list if it’s affects you.

Certainly this is a skill you can develop. I’ve noticed that in the past 2 years I’ve really concentrated on my note taking and I think it has helped me to be more productivity in my life. Do you have a system for taking notes let me know on Twitter.