Notebooks

I have a pretty good memory. At least I used to think I did. They say that the second thing that you lose as you age is your memory. I forget what they said was first. Regardless of how good your memory is, I don’t think anyone can remember everything that they need to in today’s business environment. I remember learning this early on in my career, back when my memory was even better than it is now. It was taught to me by one of my first managers. He told me that one of the first things I needed to do if I was going to be successful in business was to get a notebook and take notes on everything.

Imagine coming out of graduate school as a newly minted scion of business and the first thing you are told is that you will have to do is resume a process that you had just spent the last several years learning to loathe. I am going to have to take notes at work? I took notes in school. I shouldn’t have to take notes anymore. I am done with school, right?

Wrong.

I was done with school, but I was not done learning. Learning means that you have to remember what you have done so that you can repeat the successes and avoid the same mistakes in the future. Since you are doing so many new and different things and no one can remember everything, and like in school you need a place to store this information. You need a notebook.

Unlike the notebooks in school where you spent most of your time trying to capture the gist of the professor’s lecture for late night reviews just before the exam, or to doodle in when you are really bored in the lecture and can no longer focus well enough to take lecture notes, a business notebook needs to be more. In school each class usually had its own notebook and since you normally had multiple classes, you kept multiple notebooks. In business you normally have only one job at a time so you probably need only one notebook at a time.

I found for my purposes that a bound (not loose leaf or spiral notebook) was the best notebook platform. The idea is to retain all noted information. Loose leaf and spiral notebooks have a tendency to wear and pages can and do fall out. You want the notebook to be your “permanent” historical record that you can go back to and consult as needed.

I also found that a business notebook is also a sort of activity log. I date every page. I try to note all calls and conversations with who called (or who I called), what the topic of discussion was and what the major points of the discussion were. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone back into my notebook and reviewed calls and discussions with those parties involved to help “remind” them of the topics and outcomes. It seems that there are many times when other people’s memories may not be as sharp as they may have thought or possibly wanted either. It’s always good to have your notes to refer to.

A business notebook is also more than just a place to note the topics of discussions or log phone calls and activities. It is also the place where you capture your ideas. I have learned that ideas are fleeting things. If you don’t learn (there’s that word again) to capture ideas immediately upon having them that they will quickly fade from memory (there’s that word again) and be lost.

I wish I could remember every idea that I have had. I know (or at least have to hope) that some of them were probably pretty good but if I had not noted them I would never be sure. On the other hand I do know that I have had a few ideas that qualify as real stinkers and that I would like to forget them, but don’t seem to be able to. It’s funny how the memory works.

The point is that since a notebook is a private repository for the things that you think are important and that you may want to revisit in the future, you need to use it to not only document the activities and topics of the day, but also the ideas and concepts that came to mind during the course of dealing with everything else during the day. This function has been particularly reinforced with me, all these years later as I have started writing.

I have not learned what internal mechanism causes topics to register within me as a good idea (there’s that word again) for a good business topic to write about, but I have learned that if I do not immediately grab the topic and write it down I will eventually lose it. I will then be forced to later try and sort through all of the topics and inputs of the day to see which one might have been the impetus for the next great article that I know I am sure to write, hopefully.

I don’t seem to remember having this problem in the past, but if my memory is indeed having issues, or perhaps it is finally reaching its manufacturers capacity, it could explain why I can no longer remember the things I used to be able to easily put in and access in my memory. I hope you followed that.

At the end of the day I use my notebook to not only look at the events of the day, I look at my ideas of the day. Those ideas that can be utilized in some way in the future I further note and start to develop. Over time a significant number of these ideas have found their ways into various sales, business and strategic plans. Having a notebook full of ideas won’t necessarily cause you to have better plans, but it will cause you to use those ideas and to think about those upcoming plans in different ways, and that is the first step toward improvement.

I significant amount of time has passed since my first manager told me about this business notebook idea. If memory serves me right I have actually forgotten just how much time has passed. Thank goodness. However I still utilize a notebook daily to annotate my day and to capture my ideas and thoughts for use in the future. It may be old school, possibly because I cannot type fast enough with two fingers to take notes on my computer and keep up with my conversations, or my ideas (if and when they occur), but it still serves me very well. I also think it is an under rated activity that continues to contribute to the success of the business.

I can now also cross notebooks off my topic list for articles that I keep in my notebook.

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