30 seconds

I try to follow this advice:

Immediately after every important lecture, book, meeting, significant experience… take 30 seconds - no more, no less - to write down the most important points. No revisions, just write down the most essential thing and you’ll be fine.

This advice is from the article The 30 second habit with a lifelong impact, which also includes a story about a man who was given this advice by his grandfather, followed it all his life, and is now a grey eminence of mega-corps, rubs shoulders with the most influential people in the world, his lectures cost six-figure sums, etc. He is a man who hardly speaks, but when he does, it’s so accurate and brilliant that everyone is astounded.

That story doesn’t sound completely believable to me (supposedly, the man also writes novels that he does not publish - he destroys them on completion). It seems more like the ‘seasoning’ that is meant to grab attention and better sell the basic idea. But the idea itself is very good.

Having notes is not the goal here. The goal is to force your brain to do a lot more than just passively absorb something. While you are reading or listening, you are already preparing the summary in your head. You are deciding what is substantial and what is coincidental. You abstract away the details and condense it all into something that can be written in half a minute. It’s hard.

I’ve been experimenting with this mental exercise for some time now and I think it develops the skill to extract what’s important. Also, it’s fun.