I finally have some time to sit down again, so hopefully this will be more of an actual post than the last few.
This one is about notes. There was a specific post I was going to link to as a reply, but I can’t find it. That’s not really important though (for the purposes of this post—I don’t mean to demean that forgotten post).
I am skeptical of fancy note taking systems, at least as something I would ever use. I mean bullet journaling, GTD, etc, etc. Notes are useful, certainly—that’s why there are so many note taking systems—and I do have a notebook on my desk right now.
But the problem with taking notes, when you are outside of a schoolish setting and not just listening to a lecture, is that taking notes on doing a thing is an interruption from doing that thing. And the more thorough (read “complicated”) the more time you spend taking your notes and organizing them. Taking notes on what you are doing is an interruption and distraction from the doing. Notes are an enemy of the flow state .
Are my notes incomplete? Sure. Am I sometimes missing information I wish I had in them? Yes. It’s a balancing act. Either you pay in productivity making the notes, or you pay in productivity using the notes.
Again, I am not saying that taking notes is a bad thing. I am just saying that it isn’t free. I am suggesting that before you get invested in some notetaking system, you make sure that it is worthwhile.
My own “system,” such as it is, consists of a notebook on my desk, a date stamp (highly recommend), and jotting a line or two whenever I remember to.