This probably the longest I’ve gone without posting since I first started this blog, but I’m not suprised since, as is usually the case at the end of the semester, my workload has increased. I don’t attribute it to the structure of my classes or my duties at CHNM, but more to my rather unorganized way of doing things. Between battling off a case of the flu (or something) and working on a few projects, I’ve come to realize how unorganized I am. The case study for today: Taking notes.
I’m not sure how everyone else takes notes, but I seem to adopt new strategies every week or so for note taking, whether I’m taking notes for a project at work, a research project, a class discussion, or a potential weblog post. I admit to taking copious ammounts of notes on just about everything, but the sad thing is that I have absolutely no idea what to do with them when I’m done. I take notes on everything: 5×8 notebooks, note cards, legal pads, Microsoft Word, Scribe (which, if you haven’t heard of it, is a great program), regular spiral-bound notebooks, envelopes, napkins. After I’ve written something down I spend a lot of time hunting down that little morsel of insight; I spend more time finding the note than I do using the note. I even wrote down an idea I had on the sleeve around my Starbucks coffee cup. Needless to say that I threw that idea away with my finished mocha.
This makes me very nervous as a graduate student, as I’m coming close to my major field exams and my dissertation research. It’s something I know I can overcome if I just knew how to do it. I’m curious if anyone has any advice or strategies for sticking to one method of keeping notes organized and easy to find (and thus use).
[...] portunities, is often eye-openingly original, and also includes a reading list. A Clioweb post about note-taking, incidentally, led me to Scribe, which may [...]
I recently made a post on my blog about note taking (http://chopsocky.net/archives/2004/11/30/taking-notes-a-better-way/). There are a few methods that I found to favor over others – mindmapping, and my modified quadrant mehtod. Method aside though, what it sounds like is that you’re hardest time is keeping them all in one spot so that you can find what you’re looking for when you want it. Check out http://www.jerrybrito.com/blog/000458.shtml who uses his Moleskin with the Getting Things Done method (http://gettingthingsdone.com).
Thanks for the comment! The Jerry Brito post is really cool, and your post on the topic is great. I’ve actually used Mind Maps for a few projects (including portions of my Master’s thesis), but instead of putting them on paper I created them in Adobe Illustrator and kept them on my computer.
Yeah, I’d say keeping up with my notes is my biggest problem. Since I posted, I’ve been trying to “convert” (read: retype) my hand-written notes into Scribe, which is an awesome (and free) note-taking tool for historians. I have a pile of notes laying around in my office, so I thought it would be advantageous to just put them into my laptop.
The more I think about it, the idea of “filing” notes into one category makes it hard for me to use my notes across categories. By using keyword “tags” in Scribe, I can search for notes across keywords. I’ll probably write a longer post about this in the near future, just to keep this short.
You may also find interest in Evernote http://evernote.com (also free).