Capturing greatness or taking notes?

I’ve taken very comprehensive notes while sitting through countless-hundreds of classes, and seminars, and speeches.

Most of those notes? I’ve never looked at them again.

I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

When I was in 9th grade, a social studies teacher told my class how to take notes. He assigned us two straight weeks of watching the Nightly News, and we had to learn to get all the information down in our notes in a systematic and comprehensive way. This was a great way to learn how to get all the data to be retrieved and studied later.

As a student, that method served me well for many years. When tests are based on knowing all the information, getting all the information in your notes is pretty important.

Fast forward a decade: As a youth pastor attending seminars, I was still taking notes this way; trying to get all the information down. The problem was nobody would test me on it later. And when I went to review the notes weeks or months down the road, there was just too much information to figure out what would have been important. I had the information, but I forgot what God may have been saying to me.

So I had to change my method. I stopped writing down every detail of the sermon or presentation, and began transcribing the main points and big picture ideas. This realization corresponded to the growth of the internet and social media. Information—all the information—is available at the simple entry of a google search. I didn’t need to retrieve information from my notes as much as I needed to capture the things the Lord was speaking to me through what was being presented.

Now my note-taking is fairly simple: Since I know I’ll rarely review pages of information I’ve tried to take down, I will make sure I catch great quotes, big ideas, or even non-related things the Lord might be saying to me, or even that my imagination is developing. At this point, I’m not even too concerned about the outline. I’ve found one or two simple “takeaways” that I will actually use is better than binders of great information I may never use.

Because the goal of listening to seminars and sermons isn’t just to gain more information, but to gain wisdom. I would rather be transformed by one or two great concepts or prophetic moments than to be able to recite every word that the speaker uttered. My target now is to be able to have captured the essence of what transformed me so I can live that out and communicate that, not necessarily to be able to recite the sermon or presentation point-by-point.

What about you? Has your note-taking changed over time? How do you transcend taking notes, and make sure you can capture how you are being transformed?