The Secret to Note-taking for Busy People

Are you leaving meetings unsure of the next steps? Transform your meeting productivity with our guide to professional note-taking! Learn a proven system to ensure clarity and action after every meeting, perfect for busy professionals who need to stay on top of their game.

✅ What You'll Discover:
▪️ Why good note-taking is crucial for clarity post-meeting.
▪️ Common note-taking mistakes and how to avoid them.
▪️ The Quadrant Method: A revolutionary approach to organize your notes effectively.
▪️ Practical examples: See how the Quadrant Method works in real-life scenarios.
▪️ Tips for capturing important information without being overwhelmed.
▪️ The power of handwritten notes: Why it's more effective than digital note-taking.
▪️ Integrating digital tools with traditional methods for the best results.

In this video I'll share my tips for neat and efficient note taking. You'll learn an effective note-taking technique for any type of work: The quadrant method. Whether it's for your work meetings, for your consulting projects, taking notes for school or even for your own personal projects- this method works wonders. It's how I take perfect notes now for every meeting I attend.

00:00 Why You Need An Efficient Note Taking System
02:30 How to Takes Notes For Work
04:55 Take Notes By Hand
06:35 Wrap Up

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#notetaking

[kvanniekerk]

Watched this video last night. Today I sat in a 4 hour workshop and applied this technique. It really works. I never logged into my notebook once and got the entire meeting captured on one A4 page. I am a senior business analyst and usually I'd have pages and pages of notes. Now everything is concise, to the point and structured. Hours later, while writing this i can still recall exactly what needs to be done, what decisions were made and what questions need answering. Thank you for sharing the pearl of wisdom.

[itsani]

A recent practice that I am following is to screenshot the meeting video. People and their names appear on the screenshot. Save this with your meeting notes. It helps to remember the peoples faces, names and content.

[CaptainQueue]

I just retired after a 45 year communications career in several large corporations. After viewing your excellent system, I see how my own note-taking with far too much detail was actually a limiting factor for recalling what was decided in all those meetings. Where were you 30-40 years ago! Salute! PS: If I were a manager, I would provide this template to the entire employee team. I can see how this system could actually reduce meeting time by getting to the point, and concluding the meeting when everyone is clear on what happens next.

[liviapy]

I've been in the corporate world for 10 years and have never heard this before. Thank you, so much. This will definitely change my meetings. Thanks from Brazil!

[tipsytoes]

This is gold! I'm a paralegal but note-taking is a weakness! I know I'm supposed to be good at it as a paralegal. I have a meeting first thing on Monday and I've been strategising what/how so I can keep up with notes. Sometimes I also just blank out if the discussion gets boring LOL

[dvastatlon]

Another tip: using OneNote's recording feature will sync to what you wrote. So if you record the meeting while taking notes but can't exactly remember some details about something you wrote, just click the play button next to it to hear that part of the meeting!

[adnanabbasi]

This video shows "the real experience". You described the problems as accurately that only people whose job is involve meetings so often can understand your viewpoint.
100 marks for you!
👍👍👍🏿👍🏿👍👍

[markl]

OMG, this video is gold to anyone who has to take notes! If only someone like you had been around to show me these techniques when I was in high school or college, I bet I could have been a straight A student. As it is, this will help me when I have meetings with my consulting clients, and I plan to try to get my teenage daughter to watch this video as well. Thank you so much for making it.

[gurudattkeshav]

The Quadrant method is my most brilliant lesson learnt yet in 2023. Thank you Leila 👍

[NoTengoIlusiones]

As a hardcore excel user I love how this channel forks to other areas. Thank you Leila. Great fan.

[IvanFreelancer]

I find this Quadrant Method useful not only after meeting, but also before the meeting starts. It is because I can plan what are going to be discussed. It saves so much time. Thanks Leila.

[MrBradleykeith]

Well the quadrant method is what I use, but on two open pages of an A4 book, each page divided into two. And yes, note taking by hand enforces memory retention.

[bestbig]

She is so likeable and speaks so clear and understandable! Just nice to listen to her.

[shivamrai]

A very powerful tip that just came to my mind. As soon as you join an organization, quickly assess what kinds of workloads are recurring which you will have to do on a daily or weekly basis, and quickly brainstorm your mind to find ways to make to reduce manual efforts and create a system to achieve quality results with sufficient output. Now because this is a recurring task, you don't need to worry about it once you repeat the process few times. Infact, following this strategy, you will save so much of brain capacity to learn and focus on others things.

[karhukivi]

Excellent as always, Leila, thank you! I will organise my note-taking along these lines instead of just writing them in a column as I usually do. Psychologists have known for a long time that writing notes in script (as opposed to block capitals) involves both sides of the brain and increases the likelihood of the idea becoming embedded in memory. I regularly see students using laptops to type their notes - OK, it keeps a neat copy but when asked they don't seem to remember the content. It seems as if the brain is too busy with the process of typing and is not moving the content into longer-term memory.

[dodgecarlincila]

I'm always learning from you, Leila. Can't wait for Monday! I'm one of those that doesn't take notes and just rely on the email that sent out after meetings. Thanks for this :)

[YvesAustin]

Thank you Leila for sharing this tip. Guilty as charged!! I have wandered all around the map from no note-taking, poor note-taking, furious note-taking, and somewhat decent note-taking, but never great note-taking!! I've always admired people who would have the ability to capture key take-aways in succinct terms regardless of whether they would take notes or not. I will give your method a try!

[tiffanydrouin]

I do something similar except I write in a list format but leave a margin to the left and put abbreviated labels in the margin for what I had written down, or I color code it with highlighters. I know if I were to section it up like this I would run out of writing space in a section, usually questions and/or tasks. Margin labels/flags typically look like this: "M" usually stands for "me" when it's something I need to do, "Q" is question, "*" is an important point, "Q*" is an important question, if someone else or another's company's representative needs to follow up or be asked a question I'll use their initials or the company's initials, general notes I leave unlabeled. Color codes can vary by project/meeting.

[vijayarjunwadkar]

Thank you Leila! I really appreciate your passion, enthusiasm and determination to bring knowledge to so many of us on a variety of subjects consistently and repeatedly! It's not easy to keep the audience interested and curious over long time, but you have achieved it and I am sure you will maintain it! All the very best! 😊👍

[fuzzylon]

Thanks for another great video.
I find it very difficult not to write everything down and my writing is bad too - so I try to review my notes as soon as I can afterwards and annotate them with a different colour (green) - particularly writing clearly any words that I won't be able to figure out later on.
I like the quadrant idea, but my meetings usually run to several pages of A5 so what I usually do is mark my actions with a star in the right margin, actions for others with a square in the right margin. General notes I write at the bottom or right of the page with a line drawn around them.
Another tip - is to write down the names of the attendees on the page in advance if I can (or else while waiting for them to turn up ) and I write their initials - so during the meeting I only have to write their initials in my notes not their full names. I also tick their names off as they turn up so I have a record of who was there and who didn't show up and it helps me keep track of who is who.