Describe your note-taking style and habits

Oh dear. This question assumed right from the off that I have a style! Well… sorry to disappoint, but I really don’t. I scribble things down in such a willy-nilly fashion that I can’t even call it a style.

Habit certainly; I used to have those for sure. I remember at Uni, I would do everything in my power to make sure my notes were neat, well numbered and easily referenced so that when revision time came by, I could easily come back and find what I wanted. Little did I realise that I spent so much time doing this, that I didn’t actually do very much actual note taking. This meant that everything I had, which was beautifully neat, and ordered and structured, had no substance whatsoever. This made it useless for revising. Ho hum.

I still have some of my notes; all bundled up in folders that I can’t bare to throw away because they represent three years of my academic life. Other than that, I can’t understand why I’m so sentimental about them – I really shouldn’t be! – but I can’t stand the thought of getting rid of them. I suppose I’ll have to at some point ; sooner rather than later, since the twins are going to want/need the room where most of my junk is held.

Anyway, these days, taking notes usually means I’ve been caught unprepared and I don’t have my phone to hand. Or I’ve had a marvellous idea that just can’t wait to be written at home. To solve this problem, I do have a notebook that goes everywhere with me. If its not in my bag, I don’t tend to leave the house until it is – seriously! – because you never know when you might want/need to write down something important. Its happened to me too many times before; ideas or thoughts that I’ve lost forever because my short term memory is too rubbish to hold onto them. So the book helps me put these things down in a form I won’t loose.

Thing is, finding them afterwards is kinda tricky. I started the notebook with several blank pages, so I could ensure a working contents page. I even numbered the first half of it so I could easily refer to what was what. But as time when on, I just went from neatly penned thoughts to hastily scrawled half-sentences on any scrap of empty page I could find. So these days my notes look like this:

Style? Hmmm, cram it in wherever there’s space.
Habit? Scrawl utterly illegibly so nobody but me can read my notes, ensuring that I am safeguarded from future embarrassment should anybody stumble across my half baked, poorly expressed thoughts.

 

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.