Do you take notes?
Note-taking is a great habit we build in school and grow in college, but we drop it when we get into professional working life. Have you ever wondered why?
Teachers push the note-taking habit on us in schools to help us memorize concepts and improve handwriting. When we get into college and universities, most of us do it alarmingly to help ourselves(after all, we need to pass exams!). Some even wait for others to take notes so that they can "take note" on it :)
Then, what happens when we get into professional work life? We become independent. Not many exams, complete focus on work, and we realize that "note-taking" will not help much!
That's not true, though!
In your professional life(let's take the reference of developers), you solve problems. When you continue your "note-taking" habit on those solutions, you help many others beyond just "you".
But, How?
You need to put them out as CONTENT.
Content! Meaning?
Hmm... something like a piece of work that takes your "note-taking" to a broader audience in the form of a blog, videos, threads, ebooks, or whatever suits you. Share your learning, journey, problem-solving, and thought process. You will help many out there waiting to learn from your note-taking.
But finally, what's up for you?
As a content creator, you get plenty of opportunities you couldn't have imagined otherwise, ever! Let me try listing some of them below:
- You help yourself to go back to them when you are stuck with a similar problem in the future. Who else can better understand your solution than you?
- You help millions of other developers facing the same issue and trying to find a suitable answer using Google search or Stack Overflow.
- You gain visibility among the developer communities for contributing to their journey and success.
- You emerge as an expert in your niche.
- You get the opportunity to create content for established brands and platforms. It gives you more visibility.
- You find opportunities for paid engagements(writing, video creation, promotion, and many more).
- You can publish paid content like ebooks, courses, and workshops.
- You may build a brand.
- You get Job offers.
... the list never ends.
That's neat. How to start?
Back to the basics, with 'note-taking'. Build the habit of taking notes consistently. You can use any note-taking tools of your choice. Besides pen and paper, a few famous ones are Notion, Evernote, Onenote, Apple note, and Otter. You can even use your GitHub repository with markdown files if you are familiar with it.
You start building the draft for your next content when you traverse through your rough notes and re-arrange them to explain a topic.
What about the story?
Well, all that we discussed was part of the story. As a consistent content creator, I wanted to emphasize the importance of note-taking(even if it is just pointers) in our daily lives. We gather a wealth of information that we otherwise ignore or forget.
All the benefits I have mentioned here are for real. Consistency gets you there, but note-taking makes it easier for you and help you to stay consistent in your content creation. If you are starting with content creation or have given it up for some reason, think from the perspective of creating content based on what you learn(or want to learn). Again, taking notes play a huge role there!
Do you have a question for me?
The idea of this article was to provide food for thought for aspiring content creators. If you have any questions or topics to discuss, please post them as a comment below. I also share tips on Software Development, Content Creation, Open Source, and Career on these platforms.
Before we end, let me check again: Do you take notes? If not, will you start taking it? Let me know in the comment below.
Oldest comments (10)
Hey @atapas . Nice article.
Small reminder: there is slighlty a misuse of the discuss hashtag here. It is ment to ask the question and put your own thoughts into the comment, not to add it in the post.
I've never used this before, so I'm not familiar with the policy. I apologise.
No worries. Kindly remove the tag and everything is fine. I also get confused with the tags sometimes.
Ok
Hey Julia. I was not aware of the Tag usage. I have removed it now. Thanks for the info.
Nice view, I have a question for you, Do you generally believe that you are dependant on your (growing) notes, Or, it's a side thing(helper) to you?
If I have to answer that questions, let me put some stats.
I have written close to 300 articles on various platforms and publishers. 80% of them are the result of my not taking at some point of time. 20% are research based o client requests. So I would say, I am dependant on my notes and the habit of note-taking.
Honestly, the good point about
note-takingin general is the way you free your mind and thoughts at the time. To me it acts like a relief sometimes, but we should keep this habit and shape it in a form that really works for us, I mean, just like any habits, it can easily be misused, for example, by just dumping things in your notes, and making it less important to think.I agree with you Mehdi.
Recently I have learned about making connections between your notes. So that it is easier for us to even taravarse through at any point of time and make things valuable from the past.
I second that!