Time plays an important role in our day-to-day life. From numerous moments of spending time, one is the time given for remembering something, may be in seconds or minutes or hours. This is where Notes taking takes place, to save these moments by allowing us to capture and write down the things to be remembered somewhere just like taking photographs.

Now we know about Notes taking but what about the adjective “Effective” what is the role of that here? Why is it important? Let us answer these questions.

Effective means successfully producing the result that you want. The wrote down things must be,

1. Quick searchable,

2. Readable and

3. Useful,

Let us now first see the impacts if these points are not followed and notes are ineffectively created.  

Example 1 : We are trying to write a code that includes a specific syntax with some fixed keywords or just say it as a statement.  

• Here we will try to go back to previous project files where we used this statement before to copy it but what if we did not remember the exact place or if we are a newbie and keep on searching and scrolling resulting in time consumption. Or say we may have written it down somewhere but now did not remember the book or which page of the book.

• Or even if we remember where it is placed then every time we need to go to that place or that page which is again time consuming.

Example 2 : Testing Credentials like a dummy username or password for testing of an in- development application purpose says if we have saved it in a chat box which with new conversations gets hidden and again scrolling and searching everytime we require it.

Now if any, how if a Newbie finds the statement in some suggested file or expression or a book but got confused about parenthesis used, pick lines from where to where, which things / variables / data fields etc. will get replaced in new development.  

All like these and many other similar situations can be handled using EFFECTIVE NOTES MAKING. Let us see what can be done and how it can be useful.

• Grouping of Notes : Keep similar contents together with a title for identification like,

                 -  Title : Date and Time functions - this can be a folder or a file will include all notes related to only date and time so whenever we want to work on datetime we can quickly peek at this place, even a Newbie can understand if these notes are shared.

• Notes as a Project: We can even create a UI with navigation menu and the menus will be titled like,

                   * CSS styles which will point to a page where all notes related to CSS are kept. here again a sub menu can be created as  

                               - Colors : This will include all key points / notes related to colors in CSS

                                - Media queries : This will include all key points / notes related to media queries in CSS

• JavaScript functions for event handling : which will include everything related to event handlers in javascript like a snapshot below,

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• Notes in Books : Even if this is all digital world we will also talk about notes in a book or say a Diary here every page can be used separately for each type of notes,

                           - Say if I wrote something on a page about a date function then we will not write any other content on that we will continue adding new points related to dates only. And choose a fresh new page for new content.

                           - Even these can be managed by filling the index of a book which can tell which page contains what information. And in the case of a book it will always be better to maintain only one book at a time till it has a space.

While writing this I also learnt about different notes formats mentioned below,

1. Drawings and Sketches

2. Audio recorded notes

3. Photo notes

All these formats also should follow the 3 points as discussed above: Quickly searchable, Readable and Useful.  

So now we have saved some of our time which is utilised for searching to reuse things, and we have quick results in hand and also which should lead to in time deliveries of a project.

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