One of the things I have struggled with for a very long time is taking good notes. This is mainly due to a focusing issue I suffer from – it is really difficult for me to both listen and write at the same time. Therefore, sometimes my notes are not very good because I am too busy trying to listen or am distracted by the act of writing notes and therefore do not catch a lot of what is said (the perfect catch 22).

Part of my problem was due to my (incorrect) idea that I had to capture everything. Of course, this is not the case. All one really needs to capture are the key high level items, any important details and, especially, any actions specific to you that may come from the meeting.

A little while back I reached out to others in the forums to gather some tips and tricks that might help. One of the things that bubbled up to the surface for me was the idea of mind mapping. Mind maps allow you to catch high level concepts and the connections and relationships between them. This ends up being very good for me because I can simply write a single word or phrase and, in doing so, I am not distracted. I ended up finding a good beginners introduction to mind mapping and committed to using it for my next note taking session. It worked well enough. That being said, it did have it’s limitations. I found that while it was great for capturing the high level ideas expressed, it was not very good at detail or extracting actions from the content.

Therefore, what I have settled on now is a hybrid note taking system. One that combines doing a mind map and capturing details and actions that are important or specific to me on another piece of paper. I actually keep two pages side by side, which is one of the many benefits to the Levenger Circa notebook system I use. One page is Cornell ruled (for details and actions) the other blank/non-ruled (for mind mapping). This combination works very well for me and allows me to stay engaged in the meeting and tease out every thing I need to remember long after the fact.

Have you had any similar experience with taking notes? Have tips or tricks to share. Well, what are you waiting for? Jum into the forums and share.