Take Faster Notes
Do you have extraordinary memory abilities? If you don’t, you’ll need to take notes more often. Notetaking is an effective tool because it helps you record all the essential information you’ve heard.
Whether you’re a college student or a professional minute taker, this article is definitely for you! We’ll show you how to take faster notes without negatively affecting the content quality.
Do you usually fall behind the speaker while taking notes at work? Does it take you twice the effort to study college lecture notes to decipher your handwriting?
We’ll provide you with tips and techniques that will help you take faster notes. So, keep on reading!
Why Do You Need to Take Faster Notes?
So, why is it important to take faster notes? Whether you’re attending a lecture, a forum, or a meeting, being faster will enable you to take high-quality notes while following the speaker simultaneously.
Taking faster notes is particularly essential if it’s your job, such as for university students or meeting minute-takers, or reporters attending a press conference.
If notetaking has to do with your interests, quick notetaking from your favorite audiobook or recipe will let you relax enjoying the book more easily.
Take Quick Notes – 7 methods
If you feel that you’re not fast enough at taking notes, we’ve come to your help. Here are, seven effective methods to master fast notetaking:
1. Listen for Key Concepts
First of all, whether you’re attending a lecture or a press conference, you need to listen to the key concepts to take notes faster. But how can you tell which points are more important than the others?
Follow these guidelines to quickly take notes of key concepts:
Speakers usually start their talk with the main ideas they’ll tackle.
Look for verbal cues that signal the importance of some point, such as “One more important thing…”, “There are two key elements…”, etc.
Pay attention to the speaker’s vocal cues, which will make it easy for you to spot keywords, such as stressed words and changes in their tone, rate, or volume.
Speakers tend to repeat essential information, so take note of that.
Watch for non-verbal cues as speakers move from one place to another when shifting their talk to a new fundamental concept. Also, they may hold two fingers up to point out two key elements.
2. Paraphrase
Paraphrasing is writing someone’s words or rewriting a piece of text using your own words. However, your paraphrased notes shouldn’t have a different meaning from the original source; both should mean the same thing.
So, how can you paraphrase content effectively? Here are the steps of paraphrasing based on a method developed by Jo Kukuczka at the University of Bristol:
Read the original text or listen to it carefully.
Answer this question: Who is doing what to who, and how?
Imagine how you would briefly explain this text to someone else.
Now, write down your own version.
This notetaking technique is convenient for students who study in-depth texts and employees who take notes of their bosses’ detailed instructions.
Using abbreviations and symbols is an effective technique to speed up your writing. Here are two examples of universal abbreviations and symbols:
Use the abbreviation appt. for the word: appointment.
Use the = sign for the phrase: is equivalent to.
If you’re not familiar with abbreviations and symbols, you may check out the most commonly used abbreviations and symbols here. However, you won’t find abbreviations and symbols for every single word. So, feel free to come up with your own; it’ll be fun.
3. Use Shorthand
Shorthand is a popular method of speed writing that uses lines and symbols. It's noteworthy that shorthand involves several systems. This method was more commonly used by secretaries and journalists before the invention of recording devices.
These are some of the well-known and modern shorthand systems:
● Pitman shorthand
● Gregg shorthand
● Teeline shorthand
Learning a shorthand system is a commitment and it may take a few months.
Learning a shorthand system is an investment. Mastering shorthand will enable you to write at 200 wpm, which is way faster than the average typing speed.
Learning shorthand will help you if you usually take notes of extensive details as you’ll take notes in no time. Avoid learning old shorthand techniques as they may take you years to master.
4. Summarize
Don’t write down everything you’ve heard or read. Instead, take notes of the main points or essential information only. When you do this, you’ll be able to write shorter phrases and use fewer words.
Here you’ll find a few tips to follow when notetaking:
● Avoid writing blocks of paragraphs.
● Take notes of key points only.
● Use summary tables.
● Use bulleted and numbered lists to organize your notes.
● Avoid writing sentences. Write phrases or words instead.
Keep in mind that tabular summaries are specifically helpful if you’re taking notes of a debate, meeting minutes, or if you’re summarizing several theories.
5. Drop Vowels
Dropping vowels from words while writing will double your notetaking speed. Simply write your text without vowels as in this example phrase, hv n ntrvw.
6. Use Voice Notes
Using voice notes is extremely helpful for everyone, and they’re helpful for students and employees with disabilities.
Nowadays, you’re blessed with audio notetaking applications available on your smartphone store for free or at reasonable prices. Some of these applications enable you to link typed notes to audio notes. Also, some applications allow you to control the playback speed or edit the recorded audio.
So, it’s useful to record your own summary of a speech using an application that automatically turns it into a typed version.
7. Don’t Transcribe
If you’re fast at typing on your laptop, it is often tempting to type each word the speaker says. Researchers found that university students who take notes by typing tend to transcribe information in a lecture without processing the lecture information.
On the other hand, researchers found that students who took notes by hand used their own words and added their thoughts, too.
What’s more interesting is when both groups of students were tested, students who took notes by hand performed better than students who used typing.
So, if you take notes using your laptop, don’t transcribe and type your own paraphrased version.
Quick Recap
Are you struggling with notetaking because you’re not fast enough? Try out these effective methods for speedy notetaking to decide which ways work best for you.
First, listen to key concepts. Practice focusing on verbal and vocal cues to recognize the key points. Also, pay attention to the speaker’s body language.
Then, choose one or more of the notetaking techniques mentioned above, such as paraphrasing, using abbreviations and symbols, shorthand, summarizing, dropping vowels, and recording voice notes.
Finally, don’t transcribe. Process information to type your own words instead.
Being able to take faster notes is a really helpful for lecturers and seminar groups but there are some other techniques you can experiment with to improve your notetaking abilities. To find out about other ways to improve your notetaking check out Improve your Notetaking: 18 Tips you can implement today that you start using immediately to see benefits in the quality of your notes.
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