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by dagersandscars
2871 days ago
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In the late '80s/early '90s (college), I took notes on paper and typed them up the evening of the class. The benefits I found: * Better engagement in class vs typing in class
* Better short and long term retention of learned material
* Easier exam prep due to better retention
* Higher grades vs not doing this
* Able to share useful notes with others In my business life, I've found similar benefits. The primary difficulty is forcing myself to follow the pattern. It's easy to think "I've got this" and not type up a set of notes. |
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I also had similar thoughts in college. I planned to scan my notes from time to time and thereby have them digitized. I never went through with it. The system that worked for me was to write a date on each paper, keep all notes in a stack, and organize them into topics in chronological order when needed.
I always struggle with physical organization, whether it be tidying up my room, or planning my days. I hope this will improve with age, but for now I try to work around my deficiencies. For example in college I never had the discipline to study everyday, although I almost never skipped a class and I always took notes. It wasn't that I wasn't interested in the things thought, but I just couldn't. I also cannot tidy up my room, although I know it would benefit me hugely. I always postpone getting a haircut, washing clothes etc. to the moment when it becomes absolutely unbearable.
So I don't think I'd have nearly enough willpower to take all my notes physically and then daily type them into the computer. In business life what I can do is to create a virtual filing system for organizing notes. For example I could divide the year in 52 weeks, open a folder for each of them, inside these folders I could open other folders for projects. I could then symlink those weekly folders into other directory listings for Clients and Projects etc. By doing this minimal work, I'd have a working system that would keep me out of my naturally inclined chaos. During internships I devised a similar system for email, and it had worked remarkably good.