5 Reasons why Templates Improve Note Taking

Have you ever wondered why people would still be willing to spend money on a beautiful looking notebook even in this digital age? In a nutshell. Clarity. The sleek looking Moleskin Notebook is deceptively simple and you know you don't really need another Moleskin when you've barely used the one you've purchased just a week ago. Yet your eyes stray longingly as you pass by another bookshop. Then, when you pick up the notebook, it sits snugly in your hands. When you open the pages, the beautifully spaced lines send you an invitation to fill it with purpose. And then, you eventually succumb to buying the Moleskin thinking, I may yet use it for something that i now know not of.

So when i bought my second Boox device, part of the desire was that it would be a digital equivalent of a Moleskin notebook that would bring clarity. Before embarking on this journey to create Templates for notes for Boox E-Ink Tablets, i was looking for something i could use to take minutes during my consultant meetings. There weren't too many available options that i could find online. And if there were good templates, i wouldn't mind forking out just abit more to make the act of taking notes more pleasant. But since i could use autocad as an architect, i thought why not design some templates since i already knew what templates i wished to have.

So, in the course of designing the templates i wanted, but couldnt find, I realized all the more how important having the right template was to making full use of your E-ink tablet. Now these thoughts aren't restricted to E-ink tablets but to note taking in general. So here are 5 reasons why Templates are essential to note taking.

1. Templates give Structure
   When writing notes, we all need structure in one form or another. Regardless of whether it is on a grid line note , or Ruled line note, or Dotted Grid note. We've taken for granted guiding lines on the notes, but remove them and suddenly we become helpless as to where we should begin writing. In the middle of the page, the top left? There are so many possibilities that they short circuit the act of note taking. So rather than write on a blank piece of paper, we naturally gravitate towards having guide lines so that we would not be distracted and irritated that our scribbles are not evenly spaced between each line. The structure a template provides makes the task of taking notes far less frustrating and that is exactly how taking notes should be. A pleasurable experience.

2. Templates reduce the complexity of taking notes
   Notes can be highly complex or very simple depending on our needs. In meetings, there are always fixed pieces of information that you will need to record every meeting like the attendees, the Project name, date. If writing the notes on just a 7mm note pad, you may miss out recording certain information maybe because the meeting started and you havn't yet taken note of who is attending the meeting. So here is where having a template while taking handwritten notes will prove invaluable. The meeting may go on and you could dive straight into taking notes. However, at points where you have a quick break, the template will remind you to fill in all the missing information in your meeting.
   What's great about this is that you won't have the nagging thought at the back of your head that you have missed out some administrative items and have the confidence to stay on top of your meeting

3. Templates guide the thought process
   The template also is a guide to thinking. I have this metaphor of words as goads. A goad is a nail which you nail into a wooden post for vines to hang on to and grow and pull itself up as it grows taller. And this is a fitting image for how a template should be. It has just a few guiding words to help you dive into the meat of your notes. For instance in a lecture, some guiding thoughts could be what is the title of this lecture, or what are 3 important points. The value of having these subheaders weaved into the template is that it focuses your mind upon the essence of the event (reflections, lectures, sermons, event planning) so that as you write on the note, it is easy to refer to the big picture for taking the note to begin with.
   And this makes every note purposeful.

4. Templates are the building blocks of a workflow for all aspects of your life
   Because there are different needs for different situations when taking notes, different templates are needed. And there would be 3-4 templates that you will really use for your daily note taking needs. From these needs, a workflow develops. Everyone has a slightly different workflow for taking notes that they find useful to them. Some may use a daily planner to journal, plan, write their to-do lists , like me. Or others may use just a line note template because it is an all purpose tool. Or others may like more structure to their notes, for example they want a template with a title that says "Meeting Minutes", or "Reflections" because the template has all the important guides for them to dive directly to taking notes. Using the same templates make referring to notes easy because you become so familiar with the structure that you can scan very quickly for important information because they have already been sieved out by the templates.

5. A System of Templates saves time
   The last but most important reason for using Templates when taking notes is that it saves us a whole load of time. There are things that deserve our time and attention, but reinventing the wheel isn't one of them. For tasks that we perform frequently such as attending lectures, meetings, planning for events, journalling, planning, creating to-do lists, getting a template that most suits your needs will save you alot of time. There is no need to draw up nice boxes before every single meeting before taking a single note. And the best thing is that the structure of the notes will always be consistent thanks to the templates. Finding important information from a large volume of notes thus becomes much easier. And especially since we are now taking notes in the era of amazing digital E-ink Tablet such as Boox, or Remarkable, or Supernote, with the right template, you can summon beautiful templates to suit the situation without fumbling over multiple stacks of template print-outs which is such a hassle.

   So if you do already own a Boox E-ink Tablet, I'd recommend you to try out the templates I've designed! And I've even made one of the Planner templates, which I use daily, accessible to you for free so you can try it out on your Boox Tablet immediately! https://www.landing.studio-ezee.com/freetemplate So give our Boox Custom Templates a try today!