Notetaking

There are few things that indicate to someone that you are listening to them more than taking notes. Unfortunately, when you write a note, you are literally doing something else other than listening: writing. You then run the risk of signaling to the person speaking that you are more interested in a few fragments of what they are saying, rather than trying to comprehend their over-arching message.

Notetaking is something that we all learned in school, but once we start our professional careers many of us forget this essential skill. Even for people who got very good at taking notes in school, when there is no test to study for, the process of taking notes can seem unnecessary.

In school, teachers and professors set the expectation that good students take a lot of notes, and that if you are taking notes you must be listening. In the professional world, however, if you take too many notes too often, people may think that you must not be paying attention, or even that you are being rude.

To make this situation even worse, today people take notes on their devices, making it impossible to tell if someone is listening to you while they are taking notes, or if they are not listening to you while they browse social media.

Even if you are very well-intentioned, your device can still pop up notifications randomly, pulling your attention away from listening to what is being said. When this happens, no matter how hard you try, there's a good chance the person speaking will notice that you have become distracted.

While writing notes on your device might be interpreted as you not listening, devices do allow you to take incredibly detailed notes without any effort. After asking the speaker's permission to do so, you can simply set your device to record what is being said. After the meeting, you can use automatic voice to text transcription to generate a plethora of notes, far more than you could ever capture by hand.

In theory, transcribing a recording may seem like the ideal way of taking notes, but in reality recording everything anyone says about anything during a meeting often results in important information being lost in a jumble of words. To take good notes requires that we sort through what is being said in real time, and only record the most important points that we want to remember.

This then leaves us with the original problem of taking notes on a device being misinterpreted as us not paying attention. While we could ask the speaker to trust us and swear that the only thing we'll be doing is taking notes, if we were honest with ourselves it would be nearly impossible not to occasionally sneak a peek at an email, chat message, or a breaking news article.

The fact is, while devices are fantastic at many things, they are miserable at signaling to someone that you are listening to them. If for no other reason than social conditioning, we convince ourselves that if someone is typing on a device, they are not paying attention to what we are saying. This should lead us to the conclusion that if we are to take notes, we must not do it on a device, and instead use a pen and paper.

Many people believe that taking notes with a pen and paper means using a cheap, disposable note pad, but doing so would be a mistake. While writing something down on a piece of paper signals you are listening better than typing on a device, writing on a disposable pad implies that what they are saying will be thrown away as soon as the meeting, discussion, or conversation is over.

Using a notebook - preferably one that looks expensive regardless of if it is - instead of a cheap notepad conveys to the speaker that you have had it for years and that you will be keeping it for years to come. Just as we are conditioned to think that typing on a device means we are not paying attention, we are also conditioned to think that someone taking notes in an expensive looking notebook will keep those notes forever.

The main thing that makes a notebook look expensive is its binding. If a notebook is spiral-bound, it's not much better than a notepad. However, if it has a spine and it looks like a real book, then it conveys that it's something that you've had for a long time, and that you will have it for a long time to come.

It might be tempting, then, to get the biggest bound notebook you can get, but there are several benefits to smaller notebooks. The first benefit is that you can easily carry it with you wherever you go, but if you do, you must be very careful to not lose it. You do not want people to read your notes without your permission, and if someone discovers a random notebook on a meeting table, the first thing they will want to do is read it.

The second benefit is you can't write that much in a small notebook - probably no more than a few words on a single line. This then forces you to be more selective in what you write down, resulting in you writing fewer words, which avoids taking you out of the flow of listening any longer than absolutely necessary. Considering that a few words may be all you need to jog your memory, a few seconds writing a few words every few minutes might be just the right amount of note taking. Your goal should be to listen intently for several minutes, write for a few seconds, and immediately return to listening.

Done correctly, the person you are listening to will be more than impressed, they may actually find it endearing. It's a simple yet powerful way to set yourself apart, especially if your peers are all staring at their devices pretending to pay attention, while you are leaned forward in your chair, pen and paper held at the ready.