Dude, where’s my notes?

In my last two posts, I looked at why SEs (and sales executives) need to take notes and share notes, and what they should record in their notes.

Here’s another question, though – how and where do you take notes? Do you type them up in Google docs or Notion? Or do you handwrite them in a notebook or with a stylus in Nebo, OneNote, or Apple Notes?

I love taking notes on paper. Nothing beats the tactile feel of writing on paper. But we live in the real world, and you’ve got to ask yourself what our constraints are. Here are the constraints on my notetaking:

• Do we want our notes to be searchable?
• Do we want to be able to share our notes?
• Why are we taking notes – To record as much info as possible? Or to absorb information as we hear it and record just the important bits of it?

Let’s look at the first point – If you want your notes to be searchable (or shareable), as I do, then taking notes on paper is out.

If you’re an SE or AE and you’re taking notes during a customer meeting, chances are you want to share your notes or record it in a place where it’s accessible by others working on the account.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent team, a part of the main;

So, it’s best to use a tool that your team already uses. In many cases this will be Google docs. If on the other hand, you’re taking notes in an internal meeting and if it’s not a live doc meeting*, then you’re really taking notes for yourself, not to be shared it with anybody else. This opens up a whole gamut of new-fangled note-taking apps for you to explore. Pick what you fancy.

Then we get to the third question – are your trying to record as much as possible, or are you trying to learn? This determines how you take notes. Studies have shown* that hand-writing your notes helps you retain information better and longer. Typing your notes doesn’t have that advantage but you can type faster than you can write, and you can record a lot more information. In your first few meetings with a customer, you have a lot to record, and you should probably type. In later meetings where you don’t find yourself recording a lot, or at times where you’re meeting a customer in person and it looks rude to stare at your screen typing, you can use a stylus to write up your notes. You could use Apple Notes, OneNote, or Nebo. This isn’t supposed to be yet another Apple vs Microsoft vs Google discussion – pick whatever works for you.

Here’s what’s worked for me – type notes in OneNote (not just for meetings notes but also to record ideas) and, in case of customer meeting notes, copy them later to a shared Google doc. It gives me the option (though seldom exercised) to pull out a stylus to take searchable hand-written notes or draw a diagram in OneNote on my iPad when the need arises. The process of copying notes to a shared doc, also forces me to review and organise my notes after a meeting.

* Live doc meetings are an interesting way to conduct meetings – that probably deserves a future post on the subject.

* I am sceptical every time I read “Studies have shown …“, as should you be.