When I was a student studying for my finals, I discovered almost all of my notes were unreadable because of my appalling handwriting.
I ended up rewriting every single note I’d taken over three years of lectures. Which may have helped with my revising.
I took a class in college called “energy and entropy” with a professor who was pretty close to fuck-it-all nuts. It was a course for non-science majors, so he just kinda lectured about whatever he felt like. Needless to say, this became a class I went to pretty stoned every time, and took all my notes in doodles. I still have them in my drawer. I definitely never forgot that “eating a banana, calorie-wise, is like gluing it to your body.” also, that his first wife just never got that he experienced love by having someone cook for him…
Agree 100%.
I found in college that don’t even need to take notes, as long as I “doodle”, it’s committed to memory.
Drives people some people nuts during meetings tho…
Turboscan app on your phone. It’s awesome.
I am the same. That is if I even take notes. Think I might give the bullet journal format a try for work. Right now I’m flying by the seat of my pants and it really chaps my ass.
One of the reasons this came up for me is that I am restarting a yoga business, and I’ve gone back into my old notes and files. Good God they are just awful and not organized. It’s a freakin’ mess. I keep thinking that a really good teacher organizes herself, records herself, and that I should have taken notes in all those workshops where I thought I was being so observant.
For paper notes, I have found these spiral journals they sell at Barnes and Noble are pretty good. I have in my mind a perfect notebook - there was one called Rhino Journal that came really close but they went out of business. It’s similar to this but has blank pages, and I’d like it to be square. Also real spiral binding and not that sucktastic double spiral that’s in so many cute journals that lets all the pages fall out.
In high school I had a teacher who was really boring, so my friend and I wrote our own Harlequinn Romance during his class.
I always found that if I just passively listened to the lecture, I’d forget a lot, but just the act of taking notes itself made me remember the material; I would give them a perfunctory scan before a test but usually found that I already remembered it just fine. the T-note/Cornell note system made quick scans very easy, too.
I also use cheap ass lab notebooks too. Those are great. I might do that for the next round and just do what you did and fill the format out myself a couple weeks in advance.
just now seeing this
I said the same thing downthread:
but never heard that term before.
[looks it up]
well, that explains a lot. also explains this bit[quote=“noahdjango, post:14, topic:74190”]
in my art history classes, I would just make thumbnail sketches of the sculptures, paintings and buildings from the slide lecture and write the artist and date next to them. forced me to really sketch fast! loved that method, really helped with retention.
[/quote]
my middle school fed into the most comprehensive vocational school in my district (full auto shop, full print shop, darkroom, full culinary school, computer labs and god knows what else all on premises) but that was for the proles and I was smart so my teachers and mom conspired to get me into the academic magnet. they were “helping” me :(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
I always knew I got railroaded but now that I see this it just makes me angry.
Wide rules! shudder
Read your post with increasing interest, admiration and envy, and then came to this:
+1 for honesty! I always end up in exactly the same boat (nautical metaphor chosen in deference for your uname).
Speaking for myself, all the productivity apps and GTD tools are just one more thing to do… 
You and me both!
The happiest work time I ever had was when I worked half time in construction and half time in a creative/intellectual position. I need to work physically to feel right, but my IQ was too high to be “allowed” to “waste my potential”. I’m still mad I wasn’t allowed to take an auto mechanics class in high school. That’s just practical info for life, if nothing else.
Until you need to look back at stuff years later and realize that taking good notes is a PITA until you need them.
What can I say, I’m a loose cannon.
The system I’ve cobbled together is kind of all over the place … in that I store it in 3-4 different places. 
Work todos get managed in outlook. Work accomplishments and data I’m working on for work get stored in One Note. Personal todos in either Google Keep or with the project in question. Personal accomplishments stored … nowhere presently.
I meant to start working on development of a database application for that but I’m working on another programming project instead.
And trying to get motivated to work on my next writing project.
Across all of that, I have a 1-character shorthand I’m using to mark each line. “i:” = idea, for example. “s:” would be shopping.
Yeah, it looks pretty cumbersome. For me it doesn’t work at all because paper is something I temporarily put notes on until I either a) no longer need them or b) digitize them.
But there is something to be said for the overhead. It’s not necessarily wasted time. Dedicating the time to maintaining it once a day can give context. I don’t do it the same way since I don’t really work on paper.
When I’m going through my notes and todos, I can take stock of just how much I have accomplished. Which helps a lot when I have one of those days where it feels like I got nothing accomplished.
It’s also a good point to say “Yeah, nope. Realistically, I’m not doing that now/ever and I need to take it off my list.” Which eases the emotional / mental burden of whatever that list item was.
The right overhead can be really beneficial. Spending 15-30 minutes a day or week (whatever works for your flow) can help a lot.
I briefly got into GTD a number of years ago. Read some of the books, made one of those 3x5 notecard makeshift notebooks held together with a clip that David Allen recommended. I got a lot done but then I always do. I found the drive for productivity made me deeply unhappy. Or unhappier at any rate.
I did take one thing away from it in a long term sense. “Use what works for you and toss the rest.” (Paraphrase.)
So I tossed all of it except that phrase.
When I get busy, lately I’ve been doing my schedules like this. I like it a lot. I can use as much space as I need, paste in all the information I need to get tasks done, and I can visually see what I need to get done in the next few days.
That looks really cool. Is that in a word processor or are you using something more focused?
Evernote. I have a folder called To Do with my current lists. Then I archive them into a To Do Archives folder.
