Saturday, June 24, 2006
How Do You Take Notes?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THOUGHT" @ 03:30 PM
I am looking for help in taking notes. I take notes in a wide variety of settings. A number of books I enjoy reading have a lot of information I like to put in outline for bullet point form. I have some podcasts that contain information that I will often jot down for later use. Of course, work provides the biggest source for taking notes. Years ago I thought a mobile device would be an ideal solution for keeping all of these notes in one place as well as always having my implements for taking notes with me. How naïve of me. :? Since 1998, I have not seen a single note taking application or database application that lends itself ideally to this for my mobile device, and I think I have looked at them all and installed most of them. I use HanDBase for a journal of sorts to record phone logs and key events, but it is rather limited when it comes to freeform note taking. Unfortunately for my wallet, I even own a license to some mobile note taking applications that I have long since uninstalled as being too cumbersome or limiting. I am waiting for Evernote to release a Pocket PC application, but they have been promising that since 2004 so I suspect I'll accumulate a few more gray hairs before that day comes.
Even when it does, Evernote may not be the solution. I use it on the desktop as a solid replacement for the "Notes" feature in Outlook, but having a laptop means using it for anything other than sitting down and inputting notes is out of the question. A laptop is too cumbersome to be spontaneous. I am optimistic it will (someday) work when released.
All of that said, maybe I am not even taking notes the right way. I am a Steno Pad person. It is smaller than an 8.5X11 pad and yet still a usable size. Will that ever translate into a Pocket PC experience? I don't know. I readily admit I let technology get in the way of doing something right or effective. I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to use my mobile device when, for a particular purpose, something else would work better. I finally gave up on trying to use it as a music player. Maybe WMP11 for Windows Mobile will fulfil my needs. My point is, I should really learn to take notes well in the real world before I try an translate that to the mobile electronic world.
When in a structured environment, such as a classroom or a meeting, I am an effective note taker. That isn't the problem. It is when I hear a bit of info I want to jot down, catalog and use in the future that I get bogged down. I have multiple levels of criteria for determining where to record my to-do lists for example. Is it really simple? That is a task. Is it a series of tasks? ListPro. Is it a long series of tasks? Pocket Plan in conjunction with Microsoft Project on the desktop fills that bill. Is it just an interesting tidbit of info? Well, that could go in ListPro I suppose, but it really isn't designed for that. I run into the same problem with note taking, both electronically and in the real world. A post-it note is out of the question for longevity, but it is often the first place I scribble down some bit of info I will need later - with later being defined in terms of hours or minutes, not days. My steno pad would hold it of course, but how do I find all of those interesting tidbits? They are spread across many pages over many notebooks, which is about as effective as winking at a woman in room when the lights are out. Plus, paper really falls flat when you want to expand upon your notes. You wind up doing them over instead of trying to squeeze in more info with arrows trying to help you keep it all straight. Most of all, paper isn't easily searchable. Half the time I can't find my steno pad, much less a note in it. It may be in a different steno pad altogether. (Note: having 3 pads going simultaneously is a stupid practice. Trust me. I speak from experience here. :( )
So, how do you do it, or do you do it at all? How do you take every thought down, every idea, concept, a collection of musings, all the way up to notes for an entire semester? Paper, silicon? At this point, I honestly don't care if my Pocket PC is the answer. I would pay $100 for a serious note taking application that helped me collect and organize notes. If I could get that to work well, I would use my Pocket PC to take notes in Word then transfer them later. Maybe Evernote is the answer and I just haven't figured out how to use that bewildering tree on the left to properly organize things. Keep in mind that when I say organize, I mean assign a category or categories and have some sort of chronological structure to it. That tree in Evernote strikes me as haphazard for some reason. I am seriously anal about that kind of thing. That is why I never could get Microsoft's OneNote to work for me. That tabbed thing drove me nuts. I don't want that "page" experience. I have a steno pad for that. A Tablet PC is out of the question, as is any other piece of hardware larger than my K-Jam - at least for the portability side of things - those other devices are too large to have with me at all times. From a desktop perspective, my laptop is fine.
I am very serious about this too. Point me to a book on how to effectively take notes. I am that kind of person. I read a book on how to read a book, something I highly recommend you do if you read non-fiction books. I am open to reading a book on how to take notes too, but it has to be broad, more than how to take notes in school, or how to take notes in a book - something "How to Read a Book" covers quite effectively. I want "How to take notes for every conceivable situation in your life."
Thoughts, opinions or sharing your similar fruitless quests for taking notes welcome.
Even when it does, Evernote may not be the solution. I use it on the desktop as a solid replacement for the "Notes" feature in Outlook, but having a laptop means using it for anything other than sitting down and inputting notes is out of the question. A laptop is too cumbersome to be spontaneous. I am optimistic it will (someday) work when released.
All of that said, maybe I am not even taking notes the right way. I am a Steno Pad person. It is smaller than an 8.5X11 pad and yet still a usable size. Will that ever translate into a Pocket PC experience? I don't know. I readily admit I let technology get in the way of doing something right or effective. I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to use my mobile device when, for a particular purpose, something else would work better. I finally gave up on trying to use it as a music player. Maybe WMP11 for Windows Mobile will fulfil my needs. My point is, I should really learn to take notes well in the real world before I try an translate that to the mobile electronic world.
When in a structured environment, such as a classroom or a meeting, I am an effective note taker. That isn't the problem. It is when I hear a bit of info I want to jot down, catalog and use in the future that I get bogged down. I have multiple levels of criteria for determining where to record my to-do lists for example. Is it really simple? That is a task. Is it a series of tasks? ListPro. Is it a long series of tasks? Pocket Plan in conjunction with Microsoft Project on the desktop fills that bill. Is it just an interesting tidbit of info? Well, that could go in ListPro I suppose, but it really isn't designed for that. I run into the same problem with note taking, both electronically and in the real world. A post-it note is out of the question for longevity, but it is often the first place I scribble down some bit of info I will need later - with later being defined in terms of hours or minutes, not days. My steno pad would hold it of course, but how do I find all of those interesting tidbits? They are spread across many pages over many notebooks, which is about as effective as winking at a woman in room when the lights are out. Plus, paper really falls flat when you want to expand upon your notes. You wind up doing them over instead of trying to squeeze in more info with arrows trying to help you keep it all straight. Most of all, paper isn't easily searchable. Half the time I can't find my steno pad, much less a note in it. It may be in a different steno pad altogether. (Note: having 3 pads going simultaneously is a stupid practice. Trust me. I speak from experience here. :( )
So, how do you do it, or do you do it at all? How do you take every thought down, every idea, concept, a collection of musings, all the way up to notes for an entire semester? Paper, silicon? At this point, I honestly don't care if my Pocket PC is the answer. I would pay $100 for a serious note taking application that helped me collect and organize notes. If I could get that to work well, I would use my Pocket PC to take notes in Word then transfer them later. Maybe Evernote is the answer and I just haven't figured out how to use that bewildering tree on the left to properly organize things. Keep in mind that when I say organize, I mean assign a category or categories and have some sort of chronological structure to it. That tree in Evernote strikes me as haphazard for some reason. I am seriously anal about that kind of thing. That is why I never could get Microsoft's OneNote to work for me. That tabbed thing drove me nuts. I don't want that "page" experience. I have a steno pad for that. A Tablet PC is out of the question, as is any other piece of hardware larger than my K-Jam - at least for the portability side of things - those other devices are too large to have with me at all times. From a desktop perspective, my laptop is fine.
I am very serious about this too. Point me to a book on how to effectively take notes. I am that kind of person. I read a book on how to read a book, something I highly recommend you do if you read non-fiction books. I am open to reading a book on how to take notes too, but it has to be broad, more than how to take notes in school, or how to take notes in a book - something "How to Read a Book" covers quite effectively. I want "How to take notes for every conceivable situation in your life."
Thoughts, opinions or sharing your similar fruitless quests for taking notes welcome.
