I feel like everyone can see the benefits of taking notes. It helps us to prioritize our tasks, keep an archive that can be referenced in the future and deepens our understanding of the topics we may be studying. However, it is also tough to remember to keep track of our notes, it may seem like a waste of time if we never refer back to them and its just not enjoyable to write notes down. What makes it so difficult to start note-taking?

Being Consistent Is Hard

We all have different lives with different schedules. When someone recommends a note-taking routine it usually doesn’t fit into our life. We are aware that note-taking isn’t easy, it’s another commitment that we have to have in our lives. So why does it seem to take so much time and effort?

Priority

When we don’t make note-taking a priority, we end up being lazy and procrastinate. It’s difficult to come back to our notes when we completely forget where we were last at. It’s the beginning of note-taking that is the hardest because we don’t have the structure built yet.

Lack of Design Knowledge

When looking online at different styles of notebooks, we’ll find a lot of creative notes that are very visually pleasing, but tend to create a boundary for the majority of non-creative folks to start their own. Personally, I blamed my bad penmanship to be the problem with my notes as it was slow and not pleasant to refer back to.

Too Much To Write

There can be times when it’s much easier for us to retain the knowledge in our memory rather than writing notes down. To some, it may save time for them to memorize everything as well.

Worse For Your Memory

By writing notes down we may not be paying attention to the actual content we are writing. There have been actual studies that have shown this to be true.

Nothing To Write

If we are living a very simple life then we may not feel the need to write anything. Although, I believe the majority of people should learn to note-take as I’ll explain in the next section.

Why You Should Take Notes

The benefits of note-taking can be summed into one word, organization. Without requiring the skill to note-take, I would never have been able to make this blog. It has allowed me to:

1. Keep track of my daily, monthly and yearly goals
2. Free up my memory so I can focus on more immediate tasks
3. Reflect on myself and what I want to achieve

By being organized we stray away from entropy, which is a concept in thermal dynamics that states that everything is attempting to go towards disorder, randomness or uncertainty. This is a great reminder for that if we stop making an effort to be organized, we lose ourselves in the realm of disarray.

Benefits Of Note-Taking

• Better prioritization
• Better concentration
• Deepens our understanding of the topics
• Promotes more self-reflections
• Shows our progress

Note-Taking Structure

Convenient

• Have your notebook visible to you or easily accessible.
• Allow it to be searchable.

Visually Appealing

• By making use of underlines, colours and bullet points you can make it easier to recognize the key points.
• Try drawing something that represents the content that you are writing. It helps you recall the information easier.
• Aim to create a welcoming environment for you to come back to.

Have a system

Have answers to these questions:

• Will it be a physical notebook or online tool?
• What tools are you going to use to write with?
• How often will you write in your notes?
• What is the trigger to let you know that you need to write notes?
• What information do you need to include?
  • For example, a To-Do list needs to include the name of the task, the priority of how important it is, and the status of whether it is done or not.

Online Notes

I only started taking notes seriously in 2019 when I stumbled upon Notion. I use notion for all of my notes and it really has been life changing for me. I’ve been able to start new projects, keep track of tasks I need to get done and be more reliable to my family, friends and myself. The main reasons I find it more useful than physical notes are because:

• I’m more use to typing on a keyboard than writing with a pencil.
• It’s easier to format and rearrange the content.
• I can access my notes on my desktop, laptop and phone.
• It’s fast to access and includes backups so I will never lose my notes.
• I can include multimedia content like links, images and screenshots.

If you want to try some out for yourself there are plenty of applications out there such as Todoist, Trello, Microsoft To-Do and Evernote.

Notebooks You Need

If you want to find some examples of notebooks, I recommend you take a look at the many notebooks notion has: Notion Templates

(1) Schedule

(2) Study

(3) Journal

Conclusion

As with most routines, note-taking can be difficult to start. Even so, we should remember the importance that it brings. By being organized we can be better prepared for our goals, more reliable to others, and able to remember important information. As with any habit, to be consistent you need to make it visible and satisfying. I am very glad to have found a great note-taking style that works for me, and I hope you are able to as well.