Saturday, November 1, 2008

Note Taking Tips

A while back I came across a good tip on note taking.  It included a number of neat tricks for marking up your notes for future reference.  Below are a few of the markups that I use when taking notes during meetings.

- Undone Action Item
+ Done Action Item
< Delegated - with a note to whom and the date
> Waiting for another action
^ Data Point.
O A circle around any of the above means that it has been carried forward, moved to another list or otherwise changed status

I cannot recall where I got this tip from, so I apologize to the author if it is recognized. 

I hope these quick and easy to remember markups help you as much as they have helped me.  Got a similar tip?  Share it by leaving a comment!

5 comments:

The Lallo Family said...

I really like these for both handwritten and digital notes. I have added @ for ask someone and ~ for someday/maybe.

Unknown said...

For action items, I make a box next to the note that I need to address, and once it's completed I check it off. It's like making a check box for yourself. It's good for when you come out of a meeting with a pad full of notes, but only have some that need to be acted on.

Anonymous said...

Hi, I found those recently and love them. They came from Patrick Rhone (see at the end) http://patrickrhone.com/2006/05/12/org-fu-uberpost-productivity-whitepaper/

Anonymous said...

I use ticker like this specially on to do lists

v done
x deleted
- defered
o in progress

Chris said...

Very good system for paper-based systems, will try it tomorrow in the next meeting. It surely will take some time to implement automatically, but seemms worth a try.

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