What to do with all those notebooks that are full of ideas?

Do you take notes? During meetings? During client calls? During presentations? During courses? When making appointments? Maybe you doodle while speaking with friends and family? And what do you do with those notes afterwards?

During a session recently, a client of mine laughed that she has many ‘Maybe Never Do Notebooks’. They give her anxiety and the guilts. Which is a waste of productivity energy. Here’s the thing. I like to write things down too… but it doesn’t mean that I keep every piece of paper or notebook. Sometimes writing it out is all I needed to cement the information in my mind. This way of learning is very common and many of my clients say that they approach learning this way too.

But what about tasks that you’ve jotted down that need to get done? I use a code in all my note taking. Yours might be a star or a dash. Mine is an A with a circle around it. This means that after a meeting, I can scan a page and pick out what I need to do. The next step is to sit down at the computer and attach those tasks to a time in my calendar. And then I take action when the time rolls around to do the task. Three simple steps that take the idea to completion.

I shared these three steps with my client which helped us come up with a tailored Task Management System for them. The new perspective also gave her the energy to think about reviewing her notebooks, something she’d been putting off. I was very pleased when she made the decision to put some time aside in her calendar to review her notebooks as there were still things in there that she knew she’d want to do or at least delegate to her team.

The act of writing something on paper holds many benefits. But it’s not where the ideas get acted upon. Take care of them and help them along their journey by completing the next steps in the process.

If you need help with a Task Management System of your own, reach out! Let’s chat. You may just need a little tweak.

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