I often ponder what to take to a meeting – nothing, laptop, notebook+pen are the popular options. Nothing has the disadvantage that it looks like you’ve come unprepared to take notes, which I think can be a taken as a bit disrespectful. Laptop has the advantage that it allows you to do anything you can do at your desk. This is also its curse. You can all too easily get sucked into responding to an e-mail or IM rather than paying full attention to the meeting you’re in. So a notebook+pen are a solid 3rd option. They say ‘I’m prepared to listen, pay full attention, and take notes’.
If you ever take a look at a notebook I take into a meeting, you’ll notice that the last notes are from a meeting at least a month previous, probably with someone ‘important’. Also likely is that they were written, never to be read again. This is the curse of the notebook in my office.
My ‘theatre’ notebooks on the other hand get used a lot more frequently, get modified and updated, and the information used to make decisions. In short, they’re useful, and I enjoy and benefit from the format.
The ‘theatre’ meetings are, of course, out of work time so laptops are less appropriate, but there’s another reason why they get used in such different ways. The main reason is the ‘clean desk’ policy in operation at work. This means that whenever I leave my desk, any written material needs to be locked away. Frankly, this is too much hassle for me to actually use a notebook at work. Having to unlock a drawer every time I want to look at some notes and check if the drawer is locked again with everything in it whenever I leave my desk isn’t worth my time. It’s far easier to use a laptop which auto-screen-locks, and is a single thing to lock/unlock (to/from the desk) when I move around.
It was taking a look at my notes for a recent show that made me realise that I’m missing out at work. There are a bunch of benefits to the notebook+pen experience which I’m missing at work. The ones that stand out are the ease of drawing, sketching, annotating, and sharing.
Sadly, I don’t see relaxation of the clean desk policy as likely. I guess I need to hope that phones and laptops evolve to make drawing, sketching, annotating, and sharing as easy as paper.
Simple: take a laptop. It enables you to take notes, but also use websites (e.g. I frequently stick TODOs in Remember the Milk during meetings), email programs, look up documents etc. when necessary, and so on. We do work for a technology company, after all!
If your attention wanders, the medium isn’t the problem – the meeting is. You need a better facilitator