The other day my lead walked into my office and asked me a question about a meeting we both attended. He then followed it up with "do you have it in that magic book of yours?"    He meant my Moleskine notebook that I take to every meeting.

For years I struggled with how to take and organize my chicken scratch from meetings [aka: notes]. First there was the spiral tabbed notebook organized in some manner according to the colored little tabs. I ended up with 2 or 3 of these floating around as I unsuccessfully tried to categorize everything. Next there was my paperless attempt with OneNote, which is an awesome program that I use regularly, but having to drag my laptop to every meeting [and all that entailed] soon became more irritation than anything else.

Then a few years ago my manager at the time gave everyone in his group a Moleskine ruled notebook. Using the KISS principle, this has been my note taking system of choice ever since.

• All notes go here. Whether they're from meetings, training sessions or notes to myself for action items...this is where they live. Caveat: I'm talking about notes containing reference information. I don't use this for small actionable notes to myself like 'pick up Valentine's card for my awesome girlfriend.' That sort of actionable stuff is either in my Outlook Tasks or an Appointment to remind me.
• Ordered chronologically. The next set of notes simply goes on the next page and no need to worry about what category or folder to put it in.
• Title each page with a short, descriptive title and the date (e.g.: Feature Crew Meeting for X ... 2.12.2008). I can easily thumb through it based on the date [I'm very date/time driven] and quickly find the notes I need to review.

Now, this book goes with me to every single meeting. It doesn't take 5 minutes to boot up or require me to categorize each meeting. Plus I have a single place for all my notes. It's my magic book.

~tod