Episode 17: Note-Taking: The Simple Habit That'll Save You Time & Energy
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
In this episode, we're getting nerdy and looking at the value of mining your everyday life for data. Taking strategic notes not only helps you remember things that are so easy to forget when life is full, but those notes also help your future self make faster, more informed decisions. No more wasting time reinventing the wheel or making the same mistakes year after year. When you take notes in this way, you'll have all the information you need to make life better with each iteration.
I'm sharing real-life examples of the types of notes I take throughout the year on holidays, travel, kid activities, and more. Plus I walk you through the tool that I use and how you can choose a note-taking tool that'll work for you and your family. Listen in so you can learn how to build your second-brain and free up precious space and energy for the things that are right in front of you.
In this episode, you’ll learn…
01:07 The power of simple, "boring", habits
01:42 The importance of strategic note-taking
05:50 Examples of what to document
16:36 What tools to use and when to take notes
21:19 Your homework
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are we doing this week? I feel like I've lived a lifetime since I last spoke to you. , don't even know where to begin. And we're just getting started. We're just getting started. It's now officially November. The leaves are falling here and I am looking ahead, doing so much forward thinking about the next two months, about the next year, reflecting as I've been the last couple of weeks as I had my solar return, celebrated my birthday and thinking about the last year and what I want this coming year.
So lots of reflection happening over here. And actually, I never plan these intros, but that sentiment ties in nicely with what I want to talk to you about today which might sound a bit like a boring topic, but hang with me because it's actually such a game changer. It makes sense. It's always the boring, quote unquote, boring things that really make the biggest difference.
Don't you think? I mean, drink water. So simple. Get sleep. Move your body. It's so true. The simple, not very sexy things are the things that when you do them consistently give you the biggest benefit, the most results in your life. And so today's topic I think falls into that category and is one of those quote unquote boring things.
And what I'm talking about is taking notes, taking notes for your future self. I think of this as documenting your life in a way. Not vlog style or Dear Diary style, but strategically thinking about the things that would be helpful for you to take note of now so that you can make things easier for your future self.
There's so much great data. In our everyday lives, we can learn by just taking a moment to reflect and capture some of this information. We can learn what worked and what didn't, what felt good, what felt terrible, what we want to do differently next time, or what we would change or tweak. And just like Machines or algorithms, we can get smarter and better over time when we use the information that we have gathered through experience, through living our lives so that we can make things better.
It also helps just because who has the time and the space to reinvent the wheel? I know I don't. If I can repeat something that works, if I can find a system or routine that supports me, I want to do that until it doesn't work anymore. And I think capturing this information, capturing the notes on our everyday life is one of the most effective ways to ensure that we're not starting from scratch, having to make decisions over and over again.
It's what helps us streamline. I have so many great examples of how I do this in my own life for my family, for myself. Can't wait to share those with you, but I have to chuckle first. And actually I have no idea, mom, if you listen to my podcast, if you are listening, I feel like I owe my mother an apology because I definitely have rolled my eyes at all of the notes.
My mom. used to take. She still takes them, but I don't roll my eyes anymore. She would write down and does write down everything. And I thought, such overkill. Like, who needs all of that information? Or maybe I assumed it was just because She didn't have a great memory now. I actually see that it was genius.
It is genius. And I have to say two for the record. My memory is crazy. Good. It is so good. At least as of right now, in this stage of my life, when I'm recording this episode, it's really, really good. I can remember. Faces. I will be that awkward person when the other person doesn't remember that they've met me, but I totally remember that I've met them.
I know their name. I know what they do for work, where they live, how many kids they have from a brief conversation. And I'll be like, Oh no, we've met before. I remember random stories that people tell me. I know what I was wearing on the day that I met my husband when I was a sophomore in college when we were leaving econ 201.
I was wearing crop jeans, black boots, and a green and black top with music notes on it. I mean, I was so cool. So it's not actually about the memory, though for you, if you don't have a great memory, this is an amazing way to help yourself remember things. So, it's not just about that, though. It's about so much more.
It's about seeing patterns and trends. It's about analyzing, again, that data that we mine from our lives, and it's about not reinventing the wheel, as I said. Life is busy and full enough if there's something that works for you, and you can just rinse and repeat it. It will save you so much time and mental energy.
So let's get into some examples of what I mean. What does it mean to document or take notes or capture the data in your everyday life? Again, like I said earlier, it's not about writing everything down. I mean, certainly if you are, one of those people who is documenting maybe the first year of your baby's life and you want to note everything, do it.
More power to you. I love that for you. But what I'm going to talk about here is strategic documentation. These ideas I hope will get the wheels turning for you and thinking about how you can apply this or what you might document from your own life. But strategically thinking, what are the things that next year or in two years or five years might be helpful for me to know so that as I make the decisions at that point in my life, I have some of this information to pull from and inform and help me decide.
So the holidays, this is a great one and not just because they're coming up, which they are very quickly, but this is a great use case for taking notes.
So for our family, I track lots of things around the holidays. I am navigating not only my side of the family and my husband's side of the family, but both of our parents are remarried. So there are four sets of grandparents, lots of our siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, people that we like to see and celebrate with.
So there's a lot, and we try to see. People evenly, if that's even possible, which it's not always possible. So for me, taking notes about who we saw, when, where we spent different holidays, even notes about who hosted the meal and for the meals that we host, what we served. So when we host Thanksgiving dinner for one side of the family or the other, I track everything that we served and take notes after the fact of.
Did we have enough? were there enough vegetables on the table? Did we make too many pies? Were there too many desserts? What would my future self love to know when it's her turn? Next year or the year after to host that same meal.
And just for another holiday example, just this week, I went into my note card that is for Halloween and I took note. about how much candy we purchased for Trick or Treat this year because we bought one bag too many and I'm not talking a little bag like we bought the jumbo bag.
So I have a whole jumbo bag that we didn't open at all. And so I'm taking note of that so that next year maybe I can right size my candy buying quantities. We also for example host a neighborhood potluck every year at Halloween right before trick or treat last year I was so grateful to my past self I saved the text message invite that we sent out to everyone about The potluck and what to bring and what time so all we had to do this year It was literally copy and paste it and hit send it took Two minutes and saved me so much time.
Gifts are another area where I track data from my life. So what I get for people for Christmas, for birthdays, for anniversaries, other things like that. I track what I get, how much money, for example, that I give to teachers every year at the holidays and for teacher , who I gave to.
It's so helpful to remember, for example, this year, when I go to do gift cards for all of my kids teachers, I can look back and see What was the amount that I gave them last year? I'm going to do the same thing this year. Other things that I take notes on, birthday gifts and celebrations. So for each of my kids each year, what I give them for their birthday, the type of cake they request.
And again, did we have family over to celebrate? What was the meal that they chose? That's something that we don't necessarily need them to repeat. They can choose whatever cake they want each year. They can choose whatever meal they want. That's our Sort of birthday formula in the Denning household, but it is helpful to remember.
Oh, that was the year we got You know, my daughter, this X thing, or this was the year we got my son, his new bike again, just to, to remember and refresh that memory as you go to make decisions for this year, I track summer camp and summer childcare. What did we do? How much did it cost? What did we like?
What did we not like? It was funny when we registered for this past summer camp, we opted not to do the zoo camp this year because I had a note from the previous summer that neither of my kids enjoyed their zoo camp experience. And so this year, when it became summertime and they asked, well, aren't we going to the zoo?
I said, no, actually, we're not doing Zoo Camp this year. You may have forgotten, but last year you didn't enjoy it. It's those kinds of things that we're so quick to forget, or we can't remember. Was it last year that they didn't like it? Or was the year before, was last year actually good? No, it's there for you to review and remember, and then you can make a more informed decision today.
I track everything regarding travel. So the different trips that we take, where we went, what we liked, how much we spent, who we visited. And I also have a list in that same notebook about the places that we are interested in or curious about traveling to so that as we go to plan, we're pulling from a list of things that we have come across or been interested in.
It's all right there. I track household maintenance projects, timeline, service provider invoices, which service provider we used. So anytime I'm like, Oh gosh, when was the last time we had somebody into service or do a tune up on our HVAC system, I can look that up and see it. Or I can say, Oh wow,
the bill for that annual service went up significantly from last year to this year. Are we sure that's correct? Are we doing the same thing? Is it an apples to apples comparison? That kind of data is so readily accessible for me here in my note taking system. Similarly, I do the same thing with car maintenance.
we did just get an electric vehicle, so I don't know what the maintenance is going to look like on that one. But for our other vehicle that still uses gas, of course I've got oil changes and those types of things tracked there. I can easily go back and see when have we had updates or major repairs made, how frequently have we been taking it in, when are we due next.
I track things for my kids that have proven to be really useful. So if you have young, young kids, even younger than mine, my youngest is five. Take note here because some of these things I wish I had tracked earlier. I track things like extracurriculars they play each season. I have this tendency as I get down to the second and third child to think that they should be doing soccer or dance or piano by now because, well, my oldest is doing it.
But when I go back to my notes and remember, oh, right, my oldest actually didn't start that until second grade. So it's totally fine that my five year old is not taking piano lessons yet. But, uh, He has plenty of time, right? We sometimes rush things or feel the sense of urgency and having that data and information that you've tracked on when your kids are doing things, what season, but when you have it there, it can just give you that peace of mind or remove some of that pressure or sense of urgency.
I also keep important school information in the same area, so of course, things like their school IDs, their teacher names and contact information, any major projects that they've submitted throughout the year and test scores. Also, it's easy for both my husband and I to access it as we need it, but And I also jot down questions or concerns that I have so I can compile those and either send an email as needed or to bring up during our next parent teacher conferences so I don't forget.
I'm sure there are other things that I track but these have been The most impactful for me in terms of informing how I move forward in life, the decisions that I make, the way that I improve my parenting, our general household operations, and just our life in general, I call it my second brain. That phrase is actually one that I borrowed from a book by a similar title.
The book is called building a second brain. It's by Tiago Forte. I hope I'm pronouncing the name correctly. I'll put a link to the book in the show notes, but it was an interesting concept about building this safe place. For all of these things that you want to document to keep track of, and things for me that I want to share with my husband, with my partner, so that we can share responsibilities and both be in the know.
There's no bottleneck, there's no safeguarding of information, it's readily accessible to the both of us. But these things aren't necessarily things that I need on hand. or readily accessible in my brain at all times. So I quote unquote free up space by documenting it externally by putting it somewhere where I can easily grab it whenever I need it.
And so therefore the term second brain kind of like An external hard drive, if you are familiar with that, right? A storage place for all of the files and documents that you want to archive that you maybe don't need on your laptop readily accessible. I know those probably aren't as big of a thing now with the cloud.
I just dated myself there, but hey, it is what it is. That's what came up for me.
I'd like to take a quick break and remind you that my holiday planning workshop for busy working moms is coming up on November 7th. You'll plan your entire holiday season in 90 minutes, so there's no last minute scrambling and you can just relax, enjoy, and be present. We're talking all the lists for gifts, events, things you need to research and decide, and more.
And then mapping it all out on the calendar. So you can be sure it fits and aligns with what you want for the season. There's a lot that's packed into the final months of the year, but it doesn't have to be exhausting and overwhelming. Get your ticket today at the mother nurture. com forward slash holidays and join us for the workshop
Now let's talk about the logistics. Where do I store my notes? How often am I documenting things or, or even accessing the notes? So for me personally, I use, and we use in our household, Microsoft OneNote. If you're a Microsoft office user, maybe at work, chances are you're familiar with this tool, it is a digital notebook.
You could also use a tool like Evernote, which is very, very similar. I would think Google keep any note taking tool. What I like specifically about OneNote, and so if you're looking for other tools, if Microsoft is not something that you have or that you want to use, that's totally fine to each their own.
But what I like about it is I'm able to have different notebooks, so I can divide things by category. So household maintenance, kids slash school, holidays, travel, anything else, right? So whatever you use, I strongly encourage just in the way that maybe an index or different chapters of a book help you find what you're looking for more quickly.
Having some way to categorize your notes and search and pull them up that way will be really helpful. So look for that in whatever tool you decide to use. I would think for this, it will most likely be a digital tool that you're looking for. And here's why. I think it is extremely useful for this tool, this notebook of yours to be available whenever you're maybe at home, at a desk, Whether you're at the office or whether you're on the go to also have it as an app on your phone and having a tool that you can sync.
If you have a partner, a spouse, a co parent, where this information will be helpful to be shared, being able to sync the notes and the data across accounts is critical. Super useful. I will do some future podcast episodes. I promise now that I'm a fair play method facilitator, but also just with my own experience and through coaching.
It's all about sharing, household, administrative, family responsibilities, but one of the best things you can do if you're just planting those seeds and laying the groundwork is to make the invisible visible. Start making the invisible visible. And you can do that with note taking and documenting all of these things in your life and sharing it with your partner, with your co parent, with your spouse.
Then in terms of how often, how frequently, do you need to get in and document things, or how frequently are you accessing these notes? I think it's a process, at least for me, it's one that I developed over time. So I wasn't always great at remembering to do it in the moment, but as I would get to a holiday or a birthday or some other milestone event, and I wished that I had the information like, Oh, what did we do last year?
What did we give our daughter last year for her birthday? Or, Oh, shoot, what did I get? All the kids teachers last year. I make a note that as soon as I make my decision for this year, I go right in and I add that note. So trick or treating last week was a great indicator for me. When I saw that huge bag of candy left over, I thought, oh, I need to go write that down.
That was way too much. And oh, we did our potluck and here's when it was and here's who came. And wow, we had a lot of food there too. We could probably do less. Whenever you notice and you start to assess in your life, wow, that worked really well. We should do that again. How many times have you said that?
Oh, I loved coming to this place for our vacation. We should definitely consider coming back here. Or you're sitting in the dealership having your car serviced. Pull up your note and add the date and what the service appointment was. You can then slowly build out this data repository over time.
So I would say, as the event happens, that's when you take the note. And as the next event happens, take the note. And slowly over time, you'll build years and years of data and history and learnings that you can pull from and reference as you move forward.
So, what do you think? Have I convinced you that note taking is actually quite cool? It's quite impactful? You could call it a little bit nerdy, that's okay. I'm okay with that. I'm cool with that. It is a little bit nerdy. Geeking out over data like this can be a little bit nerdy, but it is so helpful.
Your future self will be so grateful that you took the notes because she is Can make a better decision with this data. She can make a faster decision. She can learn from past mistakes that if you don't document, honestly, you'll probably forget and just repeat again. So your homework is think about where.
You want to create your second brain. What's the tool that you want to use. And we're at the perfect time of year for you to start taking some notes. You can set up a couple of main big categories. Maybe take an example that I gave here and start to build out your notes that will grow and grow over time.
And remember, we'll be creating this year's plan for the holiday season in my workshop, Stress Less This Holiday, which is happening on Thursday, November 7th. But even if you're listening to this after the fact, you can still grab a ticket, which gets you the like, I think it's 26 page workbook plus the replay, plenty of time to plan.
And that can be the foundation of your holiday notes that you take with you to make next year's season even easier. And better. All right. I'll see you on Thursday if you're coming to the workshop. And if not, I'll talk to you in the next episode. Take care.
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