Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Art of Note Taking

Yesterday, Senator Arlen Specter told his audience at a town meeting that he has to read many bills that are a thousand pages or more and the method he uses to manage this task is to assign sections of a bill to his staff and then reassemble the bill from their notes. With this method, Senator Specter implied that he is able to understand an entire lengthy bill without ever having to read a single section of the bill. I would like to see the notes that Senator Specter’s staff took. They must be wonderful notes if merely combining them would be sufficient to enable Senator Specter to understand the entire bill rapidly and sufficiently so that he could make quick decisions.

Then I thought that I must post something about note taking on my blog. I am a firm believer that all people should take notes about information that is important to them and their notes should be personalized. Think about this. Wouldn’t it have been a great benefit if you were handed a file of well written notes concerning data and events that were important to your predecessor when you were promoted? Also, if you are a golfer, wouldn’t it have been great to have received your father’s notes concerning golf lessons that he considered to be important. And if you were Senator Arlen Specter, wouldn’t it have been wonderful if you received well written notes that your staff wrote about “America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009” in a timely manner to help you fully understand this lengthy, poorly written, high fog index bill that has the goal of changing the world’s best health care system?

The truth is that I don’t believe that Senator Specter’s staff took any worthwhile notes because note taking is a lost art, especially in the United States Congress.

While I was writing my note taking monograph about the sport of golf, I wondered why so many people, read documents, absorb some information and then return, file or discard the documents, thinking that the documents can always be accessed at a later date if details are needed. I thought that many people use yellow markers to highlight important thoughts in books and other documents so that they will be able to quickly retrieve their thoughts in the future. However, their highlights do not capture their own thoughts and to retrieve their highlights they must return to the original documents and read them again.

When I looked around my office and noticed stacks of “Golf” magazines and golf books. I realized at that moment that I had cluttered up my office with stacks of golf information because I felt that I might want to read some of the lessons again.

I reflected on my golf experiences throughout my life. I am now 75 years old and have been playing golf since I was 13 (62 years). When I was 16 years old I was a scratch golfer. In 2009 I have a 12 handicap. Wouldn’t it have been great if I had written down my own thoughts, feelings and know-how that were important to me for the past 62 years? And wouldn’t it have been wonderful if Senator Arlen Specter had actually read the proposed “America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009” and written notes about it before he assigned his staff to read sections of the bill for him?

When I was writing about the sport of golf, I wondered why I hadn’t practiced what I preached. Then and there, I decided that I would take the time to clean up my office and get rid of all of my golf information. If the golf magazines were important to me I should have taken the time to write down my thoughts. The “Shot-Making Notes.doc” file that is in “Strategic Golf” ©2008 ISBN 978-1-60402-420-3 resulted from my effort to document my own thoughts. I told my readers that if they were interested in starting their own golf notes file, they could use my notes as a start and add to them to change my notes until they became their own notes.

Today, I will send Senator Arlen Specter a copy of “Strategic Golf” ©2008 ISBN 978-1-60402-420-3 along with the notes that I took when I read all 1,017 pages of “America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009.” I hope that Senator Arlen Specter changes and adds to my notes until they are his own.