The Sherpa Project

For a long time I was a note-taking freak. I’ve probably used every type of note-taking technique and application out there at one point or another. I’ve relied extensively on Notepad, OneNote, DarkRoom, e, WriteBoard, stacks of Moleskines, every kind of PDA (including the hipster), TidlyWiki, MindManager, and a ton of others that I won’t mention.

One day, I realized that I spend a whole lot of time taking notes and very little time reviewing or referencing them. Based on this realization, I decided to experiment with not taking notes at all. This worked out much better than I ever thought it would. No paper, no laptop, no distractions. So far, it’s been a great experience.
I’ve realized that there are some situations where writing things down or drawing visuals helps me digest things easier. In these cases, I’ve narrowed everything down two different techniques that I use consistently. Here’s what I’ve come up with…

Hipster Note Taking

This is my favorite technique. I usually take out a couple of 3×5 index cards and use one for drawing a mini-mindmap and keep the other one handy for any action items that I take out of the meeting. There are many times that my cards stay blank. When I leave a meeting with mini-mindmap, I take the card and spend some time thinking back through the concepts. After I mentally review the concepts, I tear up the card.

MindManager Note Taking

This is my electronic version of the technique above. I use MindManager to collect my notes. After the meeting, I review the mindmap, reorganize it, think about the concepts, and delete the entire mindmap.

As I’m processing the information from the above techniques, I drop the relevant information into one “master mindmap” that I use to collect the things that I know that I’ll need to remember. After about six months, I only have a handful of things on my “master mindmap.”
So far, this is working well. I feel like I can devote more time focusing in the meetings and thinking about the topics. It feels good to be note-free.