Joep Schuurkes (Posts about note-taking)

Five levels of note-taking in meetings

Joep Schuurkes — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 22:00:00 GMT

level 0: no one takes notes

Few things confuse me as much as being a meeting with no one taking notes. Is everyone's memory so much better than my own? Is what's being said just not that important? Are people fine with only retaining a few things and nothing else?

Luckily I'm not alone. Johanna Rothman seems to agree with me, at least for essential meetings:¹

If a meeting is essential, it will have an agenda. It will have minutes. It will have a list of action items, and someone will manage them so that people are accountable for their action items.
- Modern Management Made Easy by Johanna Rothman

That's why it's level 0. There's no reason to ever be at this level. Borrow some pen and paper. use your phone. The least you can do is take notes for yourself.

Your default response should be a safe one

Joep Schuurkes — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 23:00:00 GMT

In his training DVD "Ukemi from the Ground Up", Ellis Amdur explains how your default response should be a safe one. In the context of the video it's about what your action should be in response to an Aikido technique like kote gaeshi: Do you jump and do a breakfall? Or do you roll? The breakfall is the safe option. The roll is the comfortable one, except for the times you should have done the breakfall. Then you break your wrist...

Unfortunately, the choice between breakfall and roll is not up to you. Kote gaeshi is a throw executed through a wrist lock¹ and it's up to the person applying the technique what kind of throw it will be. Either they gently apply the wrist lock, guide you to the ground, and you can roll. Or they apply the technique more dynamically and there's no time to roll. In that case you have to jump and turn over your arm to fall safely on your side/back. That's what's called a breakfall.

As you can imagine, there's not always a lot of time to think and decide between roll and breakfall. And if there's no time to think, whatever your default response is, that's what your body will do. That's why your default response to kote gaeshi should be the breakfall, the response that's safe in both circumstances. The worst case scenario is that you take a breakfall you didn't need to. While the alternative, defaulting to the role even when you should have done the breakfall, comes with significantly worse consequences.

My seven-month experiment of sharing weekly notes at work

Joep Schuurkes — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 10:35:40 GMT

At the end of my first week at my last job I published a Notion page that started with:

Inspired by "The agile comms handbook" I'm experimenting with a weekly (internal) blog. No big promises on the content, just the things I feel like writing about at the end of my week. And as this is an experiment, things might change along the way.

Please feel free to add a comment, respond to other people's comments and/or share with others!

In this post, I'll tell the story of my eight-month experiment with weekly notes. After that, I'll share some tips in case you want to give weekly notes a try too.

My note-taking system for work

Joep Schuurkes — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 14:39:25 GMT

Ever since I started working back in 2006, I've used a notebook. Initially, I didn't have a system, I just wrote things down. Then, about seven years ago, when I became a scrum master, my notebook became more important. As a tester, I could use my team's board to keep track of my work. As a scrum master, none of my work was on the board. And even though my role has changed several times since then, my need for keeping track of things hasn't.

So somewhere along the way - and to be honest I forgot when exactly - I created my own system of note-taking based on bullet journaling. It's simple and straightforward. It helps me plan my day, list possible future actions, and keep a record of what I've been doing. On the one hand it seems like something small and simple. On the other hand it has been a major help to me, so I figured it's worth sharing.