<story><title>A Learning Secret: Don&apos;t Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>linker3000</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 53 and work in IT for a &amp;#x27;funky&amp;#x27; learning&amp;#x2F;media company, ranking among the seniors in both  age and position.&lt;p&gt;I have a customised Cornell Notes* Word doc template, and I run off batches of 5-10 sheets to take to meetings and training sessions. My colleagues typically turn up with their tablets, surfaces, laptops, phones and &amp;#x27;multitask&amp;#x27;, however a few have started to adopt my method - it&amp;#x27;s been particularly useful for client meetings where I have been able to later confirm sub-points or asides mentioned by customers - sometimes months later. It&amp;#x27;s also very easy to drill down through Quarterly reviews and link chains of historic comments &amp;#x27;on the fly&amp;#x27; - for example, being able to confirm that so-and-so first mentioned something about a similar technical issue on a different system 12 months ago.&lt;p&gt;My &amp;#x27;Cornell&amp;#x27; style has developed an element of mindmapping on the pages, which makes it easy to track conversations or sections of meetings that break off into side discussions&amp;#x2F;brainstorming.&lt;p&gt;The biggest benefit is that the structure of all notes is consistent, so not only can I find things very quickly, but others can interpret them too - this is a particularly powerful way to allow teams to share, compare and &lt;i&gt;understand&lt;/i&gt; someone else&amp;#x27;s notes, even months after the meeting or training took place.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I also believe it looks very professional in customer meetings when everyone from the same business is taking notes in a similar way, using identical stationery.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been working this way since the mid 1990s and find it beats all forms of tech.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cornell_Notes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cornell_Notes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lsc.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;notes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lsc.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;notes.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NeedMoreTea</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m also in my 50s, and have been carrying A4 hardback notebooks around since 80s or 90s, that I use similarly. I add a margin, leave 5 pages at the front for indexing, and I&amp;#x27;ve adopted a few highlighting habits to cross reference and link for easy reference later.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s my definitive memory, and has been worth it to answer the months later questions of why we did or didn&amp;#x27;t include some feature, or designed something as we did. It&amp;#x27;s also where I think by pencil, so there&amp;#x27;s lots of plans, hierarchies, thoughts too. Those rough scribbles go at the back.&lt;p&gt;The few times I&amp;#x27;ve tried to improve on this either by tech or organisers like filofax etc, it&amp;#x27;s quickly proved much worse or slower. The old Psion 5 got closest! Simply happy to stay old world now. It works, it&amp;#x27;s quick, and never needs charging.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Learning Secret: Don&apos;t Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>linker3000</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 53 and work in IT for a &amp;#x27;funky&amp;#x27; learning&amp;#x2F;media company, ranking among the seniors in both  age and position.&lt;p&gt;I have a customised Cornell Notes* Word doc template, and I run off batches of 5-10 sheets to take to meetings and training sessions. My colleagues typically turn up with their tablets, surfaces, laptops, phones and &amp;#x27;multitask&amp;#x27;, however a few have started to adopt my method - it&amp;#x27;s been particularly useful for client meetings where I have been able to later confirm sub-points or asides mentioned by customers - sometimes months later. It&amp;#x27;s also very easy to drill down through Quarterly reviews and link chains of historic comments &amp;#x27;on the fly&amp;#x27; - for example, being able to confirm that so-and-so first mentioned something about a similar technical issue on a different system 12 months ago.&lt;p&gt;My &amp;#x27;Cornell&amp;#x27; style has developed an element of mindmapping on the pages, which makes it easy to track conversations or sections of meetings that break off into side discussions&amp;#x2F;brainstorming.&lt;p&gt;The biggest benefit is that the structure of all notes is consistent, so not only can I find things very quickly, but others can interpret them too - this is a particularly powerful way to allow teams to share, compare and &lt;i&gt;understand&lt;/i&gt; someone else&amp;#x27;s notes, even months after the meeting or training took place.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I also believe it looks very professional in customer meetings when everyone from the same business is taking notes in a similar way, using identical stationery.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been working this way since the mid 1990s and find it beats all forms of tech.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cornell_Notes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cornell_Notes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lsc.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;notes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lsc.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;notes.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>2rsf</author><text>&amp;gt;  It&amp;#x27;s also very easy to drill down through Quarterly reviews and link chains of historic comments &amp;#x27;on the fly&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;I have never heard about Cornell Notes, it seems like the missing piece I was looking for to convince myself to move back to pen and paper since I too feel that handwriting makes you remember and understand better.&lt;p&gt;But there are two things I am missing over OneNote&lt;p&gt;- Search capabilities, how do you drill down and find the one small items you don&amp;#x27;t exactly remember which category it belongs to ?&lt;p&gt;- Non language items like URLs, code snippets or command line parameters- in one note I simply copy paste them, how do you write them ?</text></comment>