Never Start From Scratch
Yesterday I gave you a brief overview of the Q.U.I.C.K. note strategy and how I use it to never start from scratch with creative content. If you missed it, catch up here.
When you are a smart note taker, the huge benefit that I have found with this is that you never really start your content from scratch again. They're literal note cards that contain a single idea. I can look through all of them based on the categories of different notes and topics that I have and start to assemble a piece of content just from the notes that I have.
For example, I used it to plan a recent Connect the Dots episode. I thought about what are the ten most-impactful productivity frameworks that I have either created or learned over the past five years. The only thing that I had to do to prepare this episode was to go into my principles, frameworks, mental models cluster of notes, and just start to pick out the ten that have made the most impact on me.
It is one of the best things from a content-creator or from a researcher standpoint that you can do to reduce anxiety about what you're learning and also boost the amount of creativity that you have. You're distributing it across many different moments throughout your day, week, and month, instead of being like, okay, well, it's time to be creative because this is the time that I blocked in my calendar.
For writing, that can still feel very anxious. I know many of you that I've coached, or worked with, or just exchanged emails with, the moment of creativity, even if you time-block it, can still feel really stressful.
What smart note-taking does is distribute moments that you've blocked for creativity instead of it being a stressful buildup. Instead becomes like a treasure hunt for your mind - looking through the notes that you've already taken and finding something really unique for this piece of content that you're creating.
Q.U.I.C.K. note-taking is a core element of the Productivity Power-Up course.
If you want more note-taking advice, check out my playlist on YouTube. It's a great way to get started and see visual examples.
