Note Taking – The Climb #172

Wednesday 12^th July 2017

For some reason I’ve been consumed by note taking today. And not taking notes but the process of taking notes.
I’m not sure if this is driven by a need to be more organised after the disruption of the last week or not but I realised that there must be a better method for taking notes and organising them.
Up until last year I used Evernote but when they changed their pricing structure I switched over to OneNote and transferred all my notes over. But I’m not sure if I’m using OneNote correctly. Or at least… optimally.
I think my interest was piqued from a FB post to an article on keeping notebooks. I came across an old moleskin of mine and looked through it to find loads of notes dating back to the Four Realms. I’d forgotten about most of them and it made me wish that I could catalogue them better.
When I first started using Evernote I started keeping ideas files for short stories and novels. These are just snippets of ideas rather than fully formed stories but one of those ideas (Napoleonic Superheroes) served as one of the ideas that resulted in Black as Knight.
Likewise, as I build what I hope will be a long running series, I’ve done some very primitive work in creating a world wiki. The idea is that I can refer to this to ensure that my continuity doesn’t encounter future issues.
But both those virtual notebooks are very basic and I feel I’m not using notes as well as I could.
So I did a bit of reading today to see what methods and processes there are for taking notes. And the answer is: not a lot.
There’s something for physical notebooks called the Cornell model which looked interesting but I think in this age of hashtag indexing and digital searching the only reason to use a physical notebook is romanticism.
And perhaps that’s why everything I looked at didn’t answer the itch I have, because I’m not so interested whether notes are in the form of a mindmap, an article or a load of keywords sprawled across a page, what I want to be able to do is be able to pull those notes together if I need to, which is why I need to go digital.
I didn’t end up with any answers other than that I need to find a process for cataloguing. It’s not desperate at the moment but it would be good to have.
I was teaching tonight so I ran another tournament. They’re a lot of hard work but people seemed to have a lot of fun. We did get one injury though… which was from a bloody experienced fencer who should have known better! (He’s a friend so I can complain about him). Not sure how well I’m preparing people who have tournaments coming up but we looked at focus tonight and I hope it got them thinking if nothing else.
It’s really interesting seeing how people perform. Luke, who performed brilliantly last week, found himself in the steel group (because I put him there) and what I think was essentially nerves kept him low in the points. Leigh, who I think is a brilliant fencer has been doubling a lot and our scoring system really punishes people for that. And yet, some of the beginners who don’t know any of the fancy moves but focused on movement did really, really well.
I find it all fascinating.
As always, the downside is the drive home. Not 1 but 2 detours on the M4 meant I didn’t get home until 2am.
I needed to stop in Tesco’s for an advacado and ended up buying some 18” Stormtroopers because they were reduced to £5 each. I’m trying to not spend money this month but I’m really failing what with Dad’s xmas present and everything.
Maybe if I find some time later this week to make some progress on the novel I can (eventually) earn some more.
But for the next two weekends I’ve got swordfighting on both the Saturday and Sunday. This weekend it’s a seminar and sparring, next weekend is a 2 day tournament. At least the 2 weapons disciplines I’m entered for are on different days.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels. Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.