When I pray and get something from God, my notepad or iPhone is always near me and I write down what God says to do or how I can change my thought patterns. When I go to church, my faithful notebook is always with me. When someone asks me to help with something I note that down so I won’t forget. If you value what someone says, you take notes. Period.
When I was in Nepal with about 24 other people, we went into an American restaurant and a Nepalese waiter came and took down our orders. We ordered drinks and a lot of different food including steak, which were rare, medium rare, well done, you name it. It was the only time in my life I saw a human memorize such extensive information of 25 people’s order to the detail. He didn’t write anything down and no, he didn’t have a techy iPad or devices, but simply, remembered each detail in his brain. As he repeated all our orders at the end, we were all so impressed and all the food orders came out flawless. What a joy and an experience!
Let’s be humble. Most of us don’t have that kind of memory power. The good news is we are not disadvantaged, we can always do the same, get the same results just by doing one small extra step – Taking notes! Sometimes when I go to church and I see some not taking notes and I think wow, they must either have some sort of super brain power just like the Nepalese waiter or they simply don’t value what the pastor is sharing. I’m sure you don’t do that at work. If your boss gives you a list of instructions verbally, you’ll be furiously taking notes. If you keep forgetting and neglecting your boss’s instructions, his next instruction might be for you to pack your things up!
As leaders, we cannot afford to not take notes. We need to value every little piece of valuable information that comes our way as God given instructions. Note taking trains you to be on the ball, it trains you not to miss out on things. You’ll find a change in your character as you make this simple change of taking notes. You’ll be much more reliable as a person, effective, timely, meeting deadlines, more engaged and involved. Others will see a change in you!
Sir Francis Bacon: “Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” Write down what God says, what your pastor teaches, what your friends or family asks you to do!
What do you use that you can recommend for note taking?
Bloom Where You Are Planted 
Like your blog and reminder to note take! Do you have any suggestions on how to revisit notes? Sometimes when I do a cleanup of my room, I find important and good notes that were taken, but I don’t remember most of it and don’t have a consistent way of visiting these notes (these are not to-do-lists).
Thanks! One way that I do it is to put all my notes together. When I have the time, I quickly go through them and filter out what I feel is important and usable, type them up and file them according to topics (I use an app called NoteLook to categorize them). This way, I can put my thoughts together better. Hope this helps you too.
Thanks! Yes, good idea to file them in categories, I’ll be able to access them when I want.