The purpose of note taking
The purpose of note taking, or writing, is not to avoid missing everything or fill our schedule, but to find out the true focus so that we can enjoy our life and thus become happier.
The old purpose of note taking has gone
The purpose of taking note in the past is to not miss something important, especially in the lessons recording every word the teacher is saying, so that we can look back if we forget some of the key points.
Nowadays we not only learn at school but also learn by ourselves from YouTube clips, to Googling, to workspaces and even we are the only one who can solve some problems when we are stuck in our life. We are learning all the time. Our brains are thinking and trying to look for some solutions and conclusions. We need to take notes of what we thought and what we can think. In the past our notes were useful till examination or we can remember everything, but now we may need them a few years later, and note taking apps are very good tools for us to connect the dots we wrote.
Note taking is not note planning of our schedule, but note writing to pursue our dreams!
Note taking apps can be as simple as text only, but can be evolving to increase our productivity and improve our lives. Some apps are able not only to organise our contents better but also create beautiful documents to meet demands in work and life; some integrate with calendars, tasks and reminders for us to plan our schedules and manage projects. Even some are allowing us to create something like a “dashboard” to have a sense of being able to control and even navigate our lives.
As we are having more and more data, people raise awareness about our digital life because when these service providers shut down their business, we can lose all our data. Some urge us to create backups, and some call for adopting plain text as a future proof format.
That said, we may forget our dream. So what when we have a full schedule of work as well as social gatherings and leisure? Does this kind of schedule building make us happier and motivated in the long run?
So what are dreams? Dreams are like blueprints. Blueprints, as I said 8 years ago, are more than plans. And even more than goals. We can’t just regard todo lists as dreams. With many checklists we can be overburdened, ending up giving up. Dreams can’t be formed by only one checklist.
Dreams are formed gradually. They can’t be suddenly born one day. They are plants which take time to grow. They are not silver bullets. They are formed by various life experiences, and keeping writing is one of the ways.
Conversations with myself to find our meaning of life
Note taking is a series of conversations with ourselves. This kind of talking through the papers on a notebook, or a phone, tablet or laptop… is a gradual process of seeking our ways of life. It cannot be designed although notebooks or apps can have templates. The magic starts when starting to write: writing a few words will result in a sentence which will lead to another sentence which will come up a paragraph with some clues, actions suggested and even answers. Slowly and slowly powerful.
Sometimes functions within note taking apps distract us from writing because they make us obsessed into engineering the system within the only app but not creating our better and playful life. Good note taking apps can have good design but only to facilitate your writing. You are the only one who can enjoy your solitude by writing to your self.
