A few weeks ago Mike Rohde, who did all the illustrations for Rework (which are now posted in 37 Signals’ Flickr gallery), attended South by Southwest and took notes.

He didn’t just take any notes, though. They’re some of the most incredible notes I’ve ever seen. Which got me to thinking. Why do I take such boring notes? My notes often look like bad PowerPoint: endless indented numbered lists. I can actually remember being taught in school that that is the “right way” to take notes.

I have a notebook that goes everywhere with me. To meetings, to classes, to lectures. And I’m constantly scribbling things in it. And yet, once I make these scribblings I rarely read back over them. On the rare occasion that I do actually read back over them, I’ve found that it’s pretty boring, which is probably why I avoid it. But in looking at Mike Rohde’s notes, it occurs to me that these are notes I would most likely enjoy going over and over and over.

In fact, I’m sure of it because it just so happens that Mike’s 2009 SXSW notes, which he calls Sketchnotes, have been converted into an iPhone app that I can’t put down. I didn’t think it would be an interesting app to have at first, but I changed my mind and I’m glad I did. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed it and gotten out of it.

So, inspired by Mike, it’s now my goal to try to make the notes I take to be less of an outline of everything that is said in a class, speech, sermon, etc. and be more visual, use more sketching, and only really capture the big main points that I want to remember. If I get really courageous maybe I’ll post some of my notes here in the future.

I’m glad Mike shared these and I hope you’ll enjoy looking over them as much as I have.