“He listens well who takes notes.” —Dante Alighieri
I love to take notes when I go to a presentation or even in class. At times, I can determine whether a presentation was good or not by the amount of notes that I took. That isn’t a hard rule, because some great presentations have engaging stories, but by and large it is a measure of the presentations I hear.
It has become critical for me to take notes, and the more I take notes, the more I become used to being engaged with the presenter while they are presenting and I am writing things down. One of the problems I have, however, is getting the right information down. Sometimes, I spend too much time writing down the outline of the presentation and miss the meat. It is easy to become locked into the outline that the presenter is following, but do I have to take notes that way? Obviously, no. However, there are always the internal rules that tell me that I should get all of the points down. This rule making only locks me in from interacting on paper with what is being spoken from the planform.
The idea is to interact more—bring out the insights that I want to take away from the experience rather than getting a word for word record of the presentation. In most cases, I can get this information from the person’s book. As I take notes in the future, I don’t want to sit and copy as if I am preparing for a test, but reflect as if I am growing in a new understanding.
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Currently Reading: “The Accidental Creative” by Todd Henry
Currently playing: 94.1 KFKF-FM, Kansas City, MO
Photo from Unsplash.com
Quote from “The Accidental Creative“