Keyboard warriors and the pen pusher

Meetings are the arena that sort the pen pushers from the keyboard warriors. Once upon a time we took a pen, paper and if we were creative a highlighter pen. Occasionally someone would unfurl a laptop in grand manner of a statement. This is me, I am digital, look at my Apple Mac.

While the meeting room does not evenly divide between the digital and paper note takers the keyboard warriors are in my experience more evident now. Not the majority by any means but slightly more present.

Is the meeting ettiquette now to show up with a laptop or tablet @to take notes or stick with paper. If your workplace has kitted you out with an Ipad or a laptop you may feel duty bound for appearance to bring it along to tap out some notes. Hopefully you are a touch typist so you are not bashing away at the keyboard one finger at a time. In fairness I think keyboards have got much quieter especially those keyboards that come with Surface or Ipad Pro.

In a meeting room full of keyboards do you bring a paper notebook? I like notebooks, so yes I would. Not to divorce myself from digital but it its what I am most comfortable writing on. Notebooks, pens, coloured ones are a treat for me. In the past few months I have applied the Bullet Journal method to my note taking.

For those who use OneNote or EverNote our notes can live on digitally. After a meeting you can use either of these apps to upload a photo of your notes. OneNote does a great job optimising photos of notes so once uploaded they are highly readable. Now for the typing bit, after you have uploaded your meeting notes to OneNote you can by looking at the uploaded note photo then type up some actions or further observations just below it. This is one way to reconcile paper and pen note taking in the digital workplace.

The digital workplace need not become a hostile environment for the pen pushers. Some pen pushers can migrate to the digital world by using an Apple Pen. If the task demands find the tool. For me this feels like going against the Bullet Journal grain so I stick with my notebook and pen.

Using paper notebooks is not some vinyl record option that leads to a purity that thinks it is better than digital note taking. Your aim should be to marry up your notes with digital. OneNote is one way to achieve this happy marriage.