One Weird Trick I Do That Makes My Note-Taking Superhuman

David H. Lawrence XVII June 25, 2019

20 Comments

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

Hey there!

Well, that is a pretty click-bait-y kind of title, isn’t it?

It would be if it wasn’t really true. But what I’m going to share with you today is something that I’ve used for the last several years to really move me from knowing something to doing something about it.

And it has to do with the way I take notes, and what I do that’s the reverse of what most people do.

Hope this helps!

David

Raw YouTube Captioning

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and I apologize for the kind of click
Beatty hey one weird stupid trick that I
do to make things awesome sorry for that
for the title but it really is a weird
little trick that I do we’ve been
talking for the last couple of videos
about a couple of things going from
knowing to doing and also understanding
how to create a process a tiny little
achievable process the three two one
homework process for taking what you
learn and putting it to use making sure
that you actually accomplish some of the
things you’re learning rather than kind
of just learning more stuff because it’s
easier that way so one of the things
that I do when I do go to a workshop or
a seminar or a class is kind of
different and kind of strange and I
found it really works for me and maybe
it’ll work for you I don’t know so what
I do is I take notes I take notes in my
notebook I’ll take notes if they give us
a notebook I’ll often choose whether or
not to take notes in that notebook I’ve
gone to probably over a hundred training
sessions webinars things like that in
the last couple of decades and this is
something that I learned about ten years
ago and its really served me well and
here’s what I do
I have a notebook from one of the things
that I took this is actually from Jeff
Walker’s launch club which is awesome
and I want to show you a page of notes
this is a page of notes right it’s got a
page of notes on it and it’s all stuff
that I’ve written down and what happens
is I’ll take the class I’m listening I’m
like oh that’s really cool that wait I
need to do something with that I need to
do an action item with that so I’ll be
writing notes down and what I’ll do is
I’ll go to the bottom of the page and
I’ll start on the last line on the
bottom of the page and I’ll put it to do
item and then I’ll go to
the second last line I put another to-do
item if I have another one and then as I
get another one I’ll do a third one and
on this particular page on this page
there were only two I don’t know if you
can see that but there are two and
notice that they have two little check
boxes next to them right because that’s
what I said in the last video about that
that weird little trick so on this page
there are a lot more right there’s like
a whole bunch of them and those I’ve
gotten most of them done but basically
what happens is you know you have the
whole page you take your note writing
your note writing your note writing and
sometimes we think of things that we
want to do I want to check that out I
want to go to that website I want to buy
that product I want to do that thing I
want to make that adjustment whatever it
is and we put it in the middle of the
notes that we’re writing with a star or
a box around it or a circle or
underlines or whatever and unfortunately
that means you have to go back through
all of your notes and look for all of
those things whereas if you just make
that to-do list on the bottom of each
page all I have to do is go through the
pages and look at the bottom of the
pages they’re all there for me they’re
all in a group and this reminds me of
the idea that you can batch process
things a lot easier than constantly
jumping around and trying to be
productive in a lot of different ways if
you can group your work together then
your tools will be the same for that
group of stuff the time you spend and
the processes that you engage in will be
similar rather than you know you’re on
your browser and you’re doing things
you’re going all kinds of different
places and doing different things if you
group your work and in this case my two
dues are grouped I may not be doing
things that are similar then maybe a lot
of different things to do but at least
the to-do list itself is grouped and
like we said in the last video they all
have check boxes next to them rather
than just dashed lines or whatever it
makes it makes it easy for me to track
actually doing what I want to do what I
want to get done when I’m doing it so
the takeaway from this is as you make
pages of notes
start to-do lists from the bottom of the
page up and when they meet by the way
just go to the next page because if you
start the to-do list from the bottom of
the page or you start the notes from the
top of the page it doesn’t really matter
at some point they’ll meet if there’s
not as many as to-do lists on one page
there’ll be more notes if there’s lots
and lots of to-do lists items that there
are on on a page there’ll be less notes
but the point is they’ll be grouped in a
way that makes them easier to handle and
that’s my one weird trick that I do that
makes my note-taking superhuman it
really sets me up for success when I
want to actually get done the things
that occur to me when I’m doing the
learning right so going from knowing to
doing and then actually getting that
stuff done what do you think of that you
got any comments on that let me know
feel free to leave a comment below if
you’re watching this anywhere but on bo2
gogo comm go there check it out we’ve
got all kinds of cool stuff that take
notes make to-do lists add checkboxes
but do leave me a comment below and if
you want to be on my youtube channel you
want to sign up for that and be notified
when these videos come out go ahead and
click on my head there if there’s no ad
there’s a subscribe button somewhere on
the page and if you want to see the
latest video that I’ve done go ahead and
click on that frame there and YouTube
will play it for you it’s awesome
I’m David H Lawrence xvii thank you so
much for watching and I will talk to you
tomorrow.

Categories: Articles

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

Raw YouTube Captioning

Responses