Take Better Notes During Meetings Thinking Like a Student
Just because you write everything down in a meeting does not mean that you are engaged. Absentminded note-taking is not helpful if you don’t think about what you’re writing; instead, you should approach him as a student.
This post was originally published on Fast Company .
A reporter recently interviewed me for an article about a product called the Listening Table. This slightly more sophisticated version of the tape recorder will record appointments and highlight transcripts where someone knocks on the table to indicate an important point.
The reporter asked if this was a breakthrough in efficiency. My gut reaction was negative. Physical notes are not a burden, but a benefit in meetings. I suspected that the people who took notes would be better at understanding information than those who passed it over the table.
However, to be convinced of this, I later spoke with Mariellen Weimer , who runs the popular blog The Teaching Professor and helps many professors teach their students to take notes. She confirmed that note-taking has benefits for both the process and the product.
“The actual process of recording something as you hear it is very important in helping you remember,” she says. The benefits of the product are clear: “You received an artifact from this meeting. You have something tangible, so later, the next day or two days later, it might prompt you to reflect on what happened in that meeting. “
While you can outsource the second benefit in the form of minutes or transcripts, only you can take advantage of the first benefit. This way, even if the meeting is being recorded or someone else is taking and distributing notes, you are still better off making your own. Here’s how to do it better .
Start before meeting
The best students don’t go to lectures blindly. They looked at the program and saw what topics would be covered and what they needed to know. Similarly, you can look at the purpose of the meeting and study the agenda. “What is the meeting about? What should I get from this? “Weimer suggests asking. Try to reformulate the agenda items as questions (which you can write down where you write your notes).
Don’t just decrypt
To be sure, “people often make the mistake of writing too little and not writing too much,” says Weimer. But unless you’re a court stenographer, you probably don’t have the ability to write everything down verbatim. Instead, focus on answering the questions you wrote down or on things that resonate specifically with you. If possible, “put it in your own words,” Weimer says. Although a journalist needs an accurate quote, for most things in life, the essence is more important than the wording, and in presenting the concept in a way that makes sense to you, “you take your own notes.”
Review what you have written immediately
“The best time to try to organize your notes is right after you take your notes,” says Weimer. Students who review their notes five minutes after class receive higher scores on exams than those who postpone them two to three days later. Connect concepts that go together with arrows. Circle what you find most interesting . Write down your initial reactions to actions or observations (for example, “John is not happy about this – you need to talk to him individually”). You can use a modified version of the popular Cornell note-taking system : key notes on the right side of the article, highlights and conclusions on the left.
Review your notes
Go back to your notes from time to time. Just as students are struggling when they only revise their notes right before the test, your final progress review will be better if you continually review notes from previous meetings (for example, you might remember to go talk to John and sort it out before he explode).
Take a look at the big picture
Does all of this – preparation, writing, processing, reviewing – seem like a lot of work for any given meeting? If so, then perhaps this meeting is really unnecessary. Save invitations to your calendar for those appointments where all those notes seem worthwhile.
How to Master the Art of Making Better Recordings | Fast Company