Note-taking is an essential skill that you will use at different stages of your life, including during your education and work life. Learning how to properly organize these notes will ensure that you can legibly write notes so that you can accurately read them later.
To ensure that your work notes are perfectly organized, follow these top tips.
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How To Organize Notes At Work
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Use Bullet-Points
Bullet points are one of the most popular methods of writing notes. These symbols are perfect for writing brief lists. This technique is effective because bullet points are highly readable and digestible.
Not to mention, you won’t have to write entire sentences. As a result, this is a magnificent method for keeping concise notes that you can easily organize into different sections.
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Choose Between Digital Or Physical
One of the most important decisions you will have to make when taking notes is what type of tool you will use to take them. Namely, you will need to decide whether you want to use a physical notebook or a digital method of taking notes.
Many people prefer using physical notebooks, as writing with a pen is often more interactive than typing. However, it can be difficult to make changes to a physical notebook, which may make it difficult to keep your notebook effectively organized.
When using digital devices, it is much easier to organize your notes. This is because you can divide work into different folders and documents. Not to mention, these devices make it much easier to edit your notes afterward. This means that you can move things around or add more notes.
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Divide Notes Into Separate Notebooks
If you are using physical notebooks, it’s best to divide your work across multiple notebooks. You can use separate notebooks for various topics or work projects. When using a device to type your notes, you can organize them into different folders.
This will ensure that all of the relevant information is kept in one convenient place. To add to this organization, you can use color coding. This means that you will use a specific color notebook for a specific project.
Be sure to label your various notebooks so that you can easily distinguish these different subjects.
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Identify When You Should Take Notes
You will not always need to take notes in a meeting. Learning when you should take notes is a useful skill that will ensure that your notes are more organized. This is because your notebook will become filled with useless notes if you are taking them in the wrong situations.
Therefore, you should strive to only take notes when they are covering an important topic that you may need to refer to at a later date.
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Try The Cornell Method
There are lots of different techniques that you can use to take notes. One such technique is the Cornell Method, which was devised by a Cornell University named Professor Walter Pauk.
The Cornell Method consists of drawing a vertical line down a sheet of paper, which will be closer to the left-hand side. However, this vertical line should only account for roughly three-quarters of the page. Meanwhile, a second line will be drawn horizontally toward the bottom of the page. This will divide your note-taking sheet into three sections.
The smaller vertical column will be decided on cues, which include questions, key phrases, and main ideas. Next, the larger vertical section will be filled with your notes. This will form the majority of your note-taking process and will include all of the key thoughts and concepts.
Lastly, the horizontal section at the bottom of the page will be where you write a summary of the notes.
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Make A Contents Table
Lastly, creating a contents table will allow you to keep your work notes cataloged. You can save the first page of your notebook as a contents table. Alternatively, you can reserve the final page as an index page.
Using a table of contents will help you to better navigate through your notes much more effectively. This way, you can easily search for specific content in your notebook.
Final Thoughts
Learning to effectively organize your notes is a skill that can massively improve your work life. By following these top tips, you can learn to make quick and easy notes that you can easily read afterward. As a result, you can better retain the information that you need.
