Beautiful post-its: my secret to learning from events and workshops

Doodling on post-its will help you remember for a long time

This blog was first published on my Substack newsletter where I’ll be publishing first, and more personal stories that won’t be shared on my Medium. Some posts will continue to be cross-posted to Medium.

My mother is an artist. Name an art-type and she’s done it. She never worked as an employee anywhere for more than a few months, and she said my father earned enough so why should she so instead — she dedicated her life to learning different art forms. She never got to go to Art School (a story for another time) and had instead studied teaching at university because my grandmother owned and ran a small primary and secondary school in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Growing up, I got exposure to so many different art forms as my mother tried things such as painting with oils, blocks, glass, sketching, fabric and even calligraphy (my grandfather taught me this as well). Whatever she was doing, she would get me involved and I was happy to learn it. Though I never studied art, I was always creative and developed an eye for design.

When I started taking notes in school, I would find myself copying what I had seen my mother do and also what I had been reminded of all my childhood from my grandmother: neat, organised notes in beautiful cursive handwriting. In university, I continued doing this and people started noticing the effort I was putting in my notes with highlighters, markers and post-its. By this point, my style had developed a bit more and though my notes were neat, I started cramming them into small spaces rather than the spacious notebooks of my mother because I didn’t want to store them in my student halls.

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From here, my notebooks became post-its. And that brings me to how I take notes. My colourful note-taking gets noticed at events and it became such a conversation starter that I started tweeting pictures of my my notes. Here are some of the things I do.

Space is limited so I choose what to record.

If I forget to bring my notepad, I will grab a napkin, a piece of paper, the back of the envelope or even the margins of a flyer to write notes. The best of my ideas and poetry have been written with a pen on the delicate tissue of a napkin. Over time, post-its became my favourite note-taking medium because they were always available at workshops and in so many colours. It meant I didn’t have to carry markers or highlighters. The stationery was always provided at the events so I didn’t even need to carry anything. And with the post-its, real estate is scant so thinking about what needs to be noted down became more important than when there’s a notebook with plenty of pages.

I write down phrases and words that I find insightful to bind memories.

Sometimes my notes will not make much sense to others as I’m involved in a discussion where there’s not much time to write down notes or maybe my mind is exhausted — so I write down phrases and words that I find insightful to bind memories.

If something really struck me during a session or conversation, noting down those phrases helps me remember that emotion.

I draw when my mind wanders.

Doodling has been shown by researchers to improve focus, attention, memory and even help regulate emtions. Whether I find myself overwhelmed with ideas while at a conference or workshop, or emotions during a tough day at work, or feel my attention waning — I doodle. It brings me back to the present while also allowing me to be imaginative and creative.

I embrace colours and contrast.

Same coloured post-it’s mean it’s from the same part of the session or belongs to a theme. And sometimes it’s to break up things visually.

I take a picture of the notes.

If I’ve taken notes on a napkin, then the picture ensures I don’t lose it. If it’s a post-it, then I put in my notebook later and take a picture of it so I have two records. With the OCR technology in smartphones, I can search for the notes in my gallery which makes it even easier to find the right notes. As I was putting together this post and looking through years of notes, I also made an album to add handwritten notes. Wish I had done this years ago!

If you see me at an event with a napkin, pen, a post-it or a scrap of paper, now you know what I’ll be doing. And you can do it too.