I hate meetings. I mean I seriously hate them and will do everything in my power to avoid them. My experience is that there isn’t a meeting that can’t be improved by canceling it. Save everybody some time and send an email.
Unfortunately I’m in a very small minority with my opinion so on occasion I have to attend. One the even rare occasion where I’m doing a lot of the talking at the meeting I run in to a problem: what the heck did I say? Or in the case of classes: what did the instructor just say?
I stink at note taking. What was important and what can be forgotten? With storage today I could just record everything, but having to listen to hours of meetings or classes doesn’t seem very productive. So at some point learning to take good notes would be a good thing.
Some people might wonder how I’ve gotten so far along w/o this skill. Don’t worry – so do I. From a different angle I might wonder how much further along I’d be if I did take notes.
Anyway, on Seth’s blog he suggested an interesting tactic using notepads. Basically to record facts, and tasks. Not terribly innovative, but what I like was his example of using a notepad to build authority and persuade people. Very cool. Read it for yourself.