The Four Pillars of Note-Taking

Capture, Review, Organize & Refer

I came late in this party of ‘note-taking’ and made so many mistake just because of my self-learning attitude. Always believed that ‘Note-taking is important’ but only after spending couple of good years in collecting silos of information. I understand the truth.

Note-taking is important but the most important thing is the ‘best use of collected notes and information’

Following is my key understanding of ‘Note-Taking’

• Capture
• Review
• Organize
• Refer

Capture

This is what I do the best from my official study days…I am still learning every day but not as an official student.

Be it a meeting or a webinar, I am one the best at the collection of relevant — outlined notes and I have a silos of information of relevant industrial information, book notes, poetry, future goals and planning, the business ideas which keep haunting me every now and then and many more.

All these information is capture mostly in both form — paper and digital.

After few years of being information collector, Now I realized the meaning of ‘Capture the notes and ideas’ .

‘It is not about collecting the most information but it is about collecting the best and sometime the least but relevant piece of information only’

In a nutshell:

Only Capture the best of your ideas, thoughts and notes.

Don’t bother about the not-so-important ideas and notes.

Review

This is where I need to improve, a lot actually.

It takes time to understand the importance of reviewing your notes and ideas but once you spends a good amount of time in collecting information it becomes essential to review your notes.

I am working on this part of Note-taking and one of my to-do is weekly review of the notes that I took during the week. This has been working out well so far and looking forward to make this one of the habit along with weekly review system.

Review of your notes will power you with the right information at right time.

Organize

This is where I am good but working on being BETTER.

I use Inbox to drop and collect all the relevant information, ideas during the week and after weekly review of the same those notes will move into relevant folders or sections with tags or labels.

I am moving towards folder less notes organization and with the apps like Mem.ai probably the requirement of organize or tags your notes — may no longer needed.

Truly, self-organizing note systems.

Refer

This is where the potential lies — a potential business idea, a potential keynote from the book you read almost couple of years back, a potential reason to write your first blog or book, a reason to smile.

Keep reading yourself — is an idea to know yourself better, is an idea to be a better version of yourself.

Notes that we keep collecting in our digital library can serve a purpose — a great purpose of generating new ideas, support as a reference, building knowledge so keep refereeing them and keep learning.

This is my experience and understanding and looking forward to improve my overall note-taking ability and get the most out of it.

Hope this may add some value in your journey of being better at Note-taking.

Thanks for reading.

Keep reading, keep sharing.

Astu.