Ways That Note Taking Can Boost Your Productivity

Taking notes is an important time-management skill that can boost your productivity in the office. Note taking is not just a way to remember important points but it also focuses your mind on important things that are being said. Actively taking notes during a meeting can also help you see relationships between ideas and even identify solutions while you are listening.

Of course, note-taking doesn’t mean writing down every single word like a stenographer in a courtroom. The purpose of writing notes is to jot down important points and key facts that are relevant to the meeting. Taking notes has 2 main benefits:

• Your contribution to the meeting will be more constructive and positive
• You will save time later and become more productive

How can you become more productive by taking notes during corporate meetings, conferences, or meetings with your boss? Let’s look at 5 ways.

1. Note-taking makes you an active listener

Note-taking boosts your productivity because it makes you an active listener and therefore more engaged in the conversation. Sometimes, during lengthy meetings, it can be easy to drift off or “zone out” from what is being said. Because taking notes involves looking for important facts and key points, your mind is actively looking for these.

2. Taking notes isolates important fact

Sometimes, during meetings or corporate gatherings, it can be difficult to identify key points the speaker is making. Of course, some professional public speakers have a gift for emphasising the main points. However, with others, it may be more difficult. Note taking will also force you to write down information in a way that you understand. You can even use pictures or other diagrams to highlight important points.

3. Notetaking helps organize information

Another key benefit of notetaking during a meeting is that it helps you organize information and identify associations. As the speaker is speaking, you may even have new ideas that come to your mind that you can write down. This can help boost your productivity because you may think of good solutions to problems that you are facing at work.

4. Improves your memory

One important way that taking notes positively impacts on your efficiency at work is that it improves your memory. However, to make notetaking benefit your memory, it’s important to understand what you should write down. Studies have shown that taking notes on electronic equipment can hinder your memory because we tend to type faster than we write.^[1]

So, it’s important to remember that note taking is to help us remember key facts, not write down everything that was being said. Writing too much can become distracting and make us miss key points and ideas.

5. Saves time

Notes from an important meeting that are well organised and clear help to save time later because you have a clearer idea of what is needing to be done. This means that when it comes to starting the project, implementing changes, or acting on the decisions of the meeting, you can do this more efficiently if you have taken good notes.

Ways to take notes at meetings

So, what are some of the best ways to take notes at meetings so that they make you more productive? Here are a few:

• Outline notes. Main points are written at the very left margin and supporting ideas are written indented from the left. The key is to organize principle ideas into important points and supporting ones.
• Mind maps. Mind maps also help to organise ideas by writing the central idea in the middle of the page. Each main point is a new branch and supporting ideas branch off those. The key to good mind maps is using one or 2 phrases for each point.
• Cornell method. Used by many students, Cornell notes divide the page into 3 sections with a margin on the left, a larger area for notes on the right, and a page-width section at the bottom. Main notes are made on the right side, keywords are noted in the left, then a summary is written in the bottom section.

Sources:

1. Psychological science. The pen is mightier than the laptop.