The philosophical thesis of “How to Take Smart Notes”
- Give each task your full attention
- Don’t multitask — Never Multitask
- Give each task the right kind of attention — Mental Time Blocking & bringing a knife to a gunfight
- Become an expert instead of a planner — Learn by Doing & Bias Toward Action
- Get closure - free your short term memory by getting closure on tasks — Think, Don’t Remember & Open Loops
- Use GTD and an inbox
- Break tasks down into actions that can be accomplished without dangling threads. You do the thing. It’s done. You move on.
- Not “call bank”, but “ask bank at 555-555-5555 about fees and make notes on options”
- Reduce the Number of Decisions — Decision Fatigue & Decide and Move On
- Use standard processes and systematize the administrative stuff in a simple, intuitive way, so that you don’t have to think about “Where” or “How” To capture a task or not, but instead you can focus on the thing itself. — Standard Processes