Take notes to remain in control

Technological advancement has resulted in a bombardment of information to sift, sort and categorize daily. We now have access to vast libraries of information at our fingertips. The more we hold onto, the less room we have to digest new information. It’s most optimal to consistently cycle through our current information, storing what we need in our brains and passing along what we don’t into notes or journals. In our digital age, we must give our brains the room to breathe in new ideas. Note-taking should be thought of as a cerebral information dump. It’s a way to offload information that is concise, memorable and gives your immediate thoughts breathing room from information overload.

Not that kind of notebook.....

We should not allow ourselves to feel overwhelmed. Forms of journaling can help alleviate pressure on our internal memory storage. By locking away memories in external notepads or journals, you allow your primary senses to stay focused and on-task. Due dates, upcoming events and reminders should be offloaded as soon as possible. Give yourself some space to form new ideas, and optimize old ones. Artists and high performance achievers often take a notebook wherever they go, to capture their thought provoking ideas and feelings in the moment. Artists will sketch a landscape, noting the shape, form, shadow and colour composition. They’ll return to their workshop and reproduce a masterpiece from nothing but that sketch, as it teases their memory formed from years of mastering their personal note taking process.

School is for fools, but notes aren't

It's important to look at your own note-taking habits. Do you like to note things down word-for-word? Can you reread your notes later? How good are you at taking notes during meetings or during conversation? What sort of information do you find important or think needs capturing? Can you rely on yourself to access these notes and have the same mental stimulation and thought processes of the time when you were writing them? How does the quality of your notes change day-to-day? What makes you a better or a worse note taker? These are all things that must be considered. 

Dear Diary, today I was feeling LSKHDFHISDFLH

A very simple and practical way to start a journal is to simply write on a scale of one to ten how your day was. Nothing more. Over time you can add a word next to your number. Something to describe the day, something that is simple and easy to do. How could you say you don’t have the time of day to write down one word? That word then becomes a sentence, which soon becomes a paragraph. As always, start small and build. The compounding effects of consistency and action are immeasurable.