In reading David's books and listening to the CD's, two areas of weakness which jumped out at me were mind-mapping and note-taking. At 57, for some reason I had never encountered mind mapping. And my note-taking is woefully inadequate for many of the same reasons set forth in the prior note - in college I usually just listened to the lectures, skimmed the text, and passed the tests (can't claim to have aced them; just passed).
My business practices have been pretty much the same and over the years I stayed well-organized keping things in my head with Outlook as a buffer. However, over the past 3-5 years I've begun to notice things slipping. As I've tried to compensate by taking notes in meetings & at events, ironically I've found myself getting more disorganized with pages of notes floating all over the place.
I'm now implementing GTD, using my Palm (a gift which had been sitting in the box for a couple of years), and have decided to focus on increasing my note-taking skills. So far, the best approach I've found is dividing the page into a slim left colum, a wide center column, and a medium right column (similar to a web page layout). I take notes in the center with actions or key words in the left colum, and questions, follow-ups, or links in the right column. If the meeting or event requires a summary, I draw a fourth line from left to right across the bottom and write it there. Using different color pens also helps to visually orient me to these elements. Finally, I'm trying to discipline myself to review the notes immediately after the event and deciding on next actions, if I've inherited any. Everything else in the notes is either dump, delegate, defer, or file in reference.
Anyone willing to critique this method? I'm looking for opportunities to improve, have a thick skin, and am not resistant to change.
