You Must Have a Notebook
When you were in school, you had a notebook. If the teacher said something, you wrote it down. If you read something important in a text book, you wrote it down. Your notes were organized according to your various classes. When it came time to get ready for the exam, you reviewed your notes many times so that you could do the best you could. Many people even keep their old notebooks so that they can look through them once in a while. For years, I kept my college notebooks in a trunk in my parents’ basement.
Then, the concept of taking notes came to an end.
So many people stopped carrying a notebook or taking notes after they were finished with school. It makes NO SENSE.
Here is my advice. YOU MUST HAVE A NOTEBOOK. YOU MUST TAKE NOTES. Every day, throughout the day. Every page of your notebook should have the date. You should NEVER rip pages out of your notebook. In fact, do not buy a spiral notebook. ALWAYS buy and use a notebook that is BOUND. (Moleskin is a great brand but there are many others).
(See below for my favorite brand of planner notebooks, the full focus planner – Yes, they have notebooks also)
First, Put your name and email on the cover of your notebook or on the inside cover. If you lose your notebook, maybe the person that finds it will contact you.
When you show up to a meeting or when you are walking around while you are at work, you should ALWAYS have your notebook with you. There are no exceptions.
It is extremely professional to show up to a meeting with someone and then pull out your notebook and take notes.
On the other hand, IT IS EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL to show up to a meeting WITHOUT a notebook and then “Ask for a piece of paper,” to start taking notes. (“Really?” If this is what you are doing then you are going to be outperformed by your peers). (Your boss see’s everything).
Let me add something: For those of you that say “I have my “NOTES APP” on my phone, SORRY, I’m not buying it. If you are in an important meeting, taking notes on your phone is clunky and unprofessional. There is no way you can pay attention and keep up at a meeting taking notes on your phone. Now if it’s a meeting where everyone is on their laptops taking notes, that is probably the only way it is possible to keep up taking notes electronically.
However, it’s still perceived as MORE PROFESSIONAL for you to be at a meeting with someone and to take notes in a notebook.
FYI..I use EVERNOTE extensively but I still have a notebook that I carry with me everywhere. My notebook is my capture tool, not Evernote (and I have 5 years of notes inside Evernote ! ).
Last but not least, taking neat, organized, professional notes is the single best way to keep your productivity as high as possible. In fact, there is endless research that using a paper planner is more effective than the calendar app on your phone. The pendulum has been swinging back to paper planners. Here is one example of an article from the Wall Street Journal from 2019.
The Trendy New Way to Organize Your Schedule: A Paper Planner
Hands down for me, the single best paper planner is the FULL FOCUS PLANNER. This is where I take all my notes. I have been using this system for about 5 years and it has raised my productivity tremendously. All the executives at my company use this system. I have heard many times from our team that they don’t even know how they would keep track of everything without these planners. It can be used for anything, Work, School, College, you name it. And guess what? It’s fun to keep track of everything and stay productive. Full Focus even have a kids version.
Here is a link to the Full Focus Planner Home Page (My Favorite notebook / planner).
Below is a link to all the videos from the Full Focus Planner Website. These videos are great to watch if you want to get ideas about how to be more productive with your notebook, even if you don’t use the Full Focus System.
Here is a link to the video describing the DAILY PAGES of the Full Focus Notebook. This is a good video to watch to get you thinking about how you can organize your daily notebook, even if you don’t use their system.
If you don’t want to make the leap to a paper day planner just yet, here is a link to the Moleskin website. These are great notebooks that will show people how professional and organized you are.
https://www.moleskine.com/en-us/
Here is the bottom line, you need to have a notebook so that you can take notes. Don’t show up with out a notebook. This is going to help you be the most productive you can be and it’s going to show people how professional you are.
Don’t be “That person” taking notes on a scrap piece of paper or a single sheet of paper.
Which notebook / paper planner will you choose?
Noah Katz 
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