Jun 23 2008
Ultimate Note-Taking: Capture Text, Audio and Visual Notes
I was walking down a street in Istanbul near the Hagia Sophia when loudspeakers atop an army of high minarets began blaring the Muslim prayers. I stopped, pulled a small audio recorder out of my over-the-shoulder bag (a manly bag, of course), and began recording the exotic sounds of the prayers and street noises. I then took my camera out of the bag and shot a few photos to accompany the sounds. When the melodic prayers were finished, I pulled my pocket-sized journal and mini-pen out of my front pant pocket and jotted down some notes about that moment in time – what I had heard, seen and thought. I knew I would not only need these notes for the travel articles I would write about my trip to Turkey, but for my own memory bank.
Not long after returning from Turkey I was sitting in a meeting with the directors of a business who had hired me to write the text for their glossy company publication. On the boardroom table in front of me were my notebook, my audio recorder and a camera. As the company’s leaders gave me the information I would need to complete the project, I took notes in my notebook and kept my audio recorder running to make certain I wouldn’t miss anything. The camera came in handy later as we toured the manufacturing plant and I took photos of the various process I would have to write about.
For writers, information is critical. Whether you are writing an article, a business project, a book or something just for yourself, you need information. You do not want to be within 15 minutes of the deadline for a business brochure and realize you can’t remember the name of that revolutionary new manufacturing technique being used, and you don’t have anything about it in your notes, and the only person who has that information is on a fishing trip in the wilds of Alaska.
Nor do you want to have your writing come to a screeching halt because you can’t remember what the name of that big mosque you were walking by during afternoon prayers and you don’t want to dilute your article by referring to it as “some big mosque” rather than “the world-famous Hagia Sophia.”
The trick is to take good notes.
The second trick is to take more than just text notes when it can help: take audio and visual notes. When you take text, audio and visual notes, you’re covering your bases and you’ll be surprised how much fuller and more robust your information will be. And that, in turn, will give your writing an edge.
It’s about capturing information, and today we have wonderful tools to do that – more than ever before. What do I use? For a notebook, it’s the pocket-sized Moleskine notebook – a little gem that is so cool it has attracted a worldwide cult following. When I die, I want to be buried with a bunch of Moleskines … just in case.
For an audio recorder, I use the digital Olympus DS-2200. It’s small enough to slip in any pocket and captures voices and sounds with amazing clarity.
The camera I use is the Nikon D50 digital SLR with the Nikon 18-200mm lens. The D50 is certainly not the top of the Nikon line, but it produces wonderful picture quality and is smaller than the pro series cameras, making it lighter and easier to haul around. The lens is the most popular lens in Nikon’s history, because its focal range and quality make it the only lens most people will ever need. I’ve taken dozens of shots with this camera/lens combo that have been published with my travel articles. However, I’m looking for a smaller camera to use as a visual note-taker when I don’t have to turn in magazine-quality photos. I believe in traveling light, and I am, after all, a writer – not a photographer.
Obviously, you won’t want to take all these note-taking tools with you wherever you go. But I will confess that I do take my Moleskine with me virtually everywhere to capture thoughts, ideas and other mental scraps before they get away. The little black notebook is always either in my pocket, on my desk or on my nightstand when I’m in bed. Truth be told, it even accompanies me to the bathroom, because you never know when something brilliant will pop out come to mind.
If you are looking for a smaller camera, you might check out the Canon Powershot G9. It’s getting many good reviews, and I can say from personal experience that it is a pretty decent little shooter.
Love the blog.
Funny you’d mention the G9. It was just recommended to me this weekend. It must be good. Thanks for the tip!
The G9 is a great camera. It even has RAW mode but if all you need is something for non-publishing purposes and is easy to carry, I would suggest a camera that is truly able to be put into your shirt pocket. If you go to http://www.dpreview.com you can see all the best cameras and the reviews.
I actually just got a pocket camera that I’m in love with… I bought it just for this purpose, to keep in a bag and capture a moment before it slips away…
Nikon Coolpix S600 - 10MP, 2.7 in LCD, quick turn-on and response time, 28-112mm zoom - the wide angle is actually pretty nice. ISO3200… for $250 at Ritz it was a nice find…
great post btw.
I’d recommend the G9 too - I’ve actually got a G7, the slightly older model, but its a really ace camera.
Great blog!
I am more interested in the audio recorder. What kind is it? Easy to use? Digital? Can you download? I find I am constantly referring to audio of interviews when writing. Their exact words will always beat my prettiest prose.
William, the Olympus DS 2200 digital recorder I have is very easy to use. You can download the recordings made in it to a computer via a USB cable and then use transcription software and a foot pedal to transcribe it. The transcription software I use is the Olympus DSS Player (AS-2200). Olympus might have more recent versions of both the recorder and software now. I’ll bet I’ve done close to a thousand interviews in my career, and I always record them one way or another. Cheers.
Steve: Apologies for the cross-posting, but I also left a similar comment on moleskinerie. First of all, thanks again for yet another interesting topic. I expend a lot of cycles over the topic of effective note-taking. Alas, in spite of that, I think I do an inconsistent, if not poor, job of it. It would be useful to be able to look at your (or anyone else’s) verbatim notes as they were taken at the time - not the revised versions.
[...] Osborne’s article, Ultimate Note-Taking: Capture Text, Audio and Visual Notes, provides some good pointers on taking good notes using audio, images, and handwritten [...]
The snapping photos idea is a great one. I walk through the store quite a bit and see something that I want to check out when I get home and go online (to compare prices), but I always end up forgetting the things because I do not have a note book or pen.
I’m about to buy the 3G iPhone when it comes out though, so I think that will help me with snapping and uploading photos to remember things. Thanks for the recommendations!
Jake
I love this idea, and found your blog through Moleskinerie, and will now subscribe. But do keep in mind when you write your article that Hagia Sophia is an Orthodox cathedral, not a mosque, OK?
Actually, Ann, we’re both right, but at different times. Hagia Sophia was originally a cathedral, as you say. In fact, it was the largest cathedral in the world for over 1,000 years. When the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II ordered the cathedral to be converted to a mosque, and it served as such until 1935, when it was made into a museum by the Republic of Turkey. When you go into it today, the Christian icons are no longer visible. The building is filled with Muslim symbols and art.