I fail to take notes

Welcome to the iField to Learn Podcast, where we think that failing is the best way to learn. We explore various topics using stories, interviews and learnings, and hopes that you too can rethink how you feel about failing. Together, we can learn to be better failers. I'm your host, Israel Vega, and I failed to learn. With these, or goals, Mr. Shad Phillips, hey Shad. Thank you Israel. We do indeed think that failing is the best way to learn. We're glad you've joined us to explore different thoughts around different topics as we debate ideas and talk to people across the multitude of industries to better understand how we can become better failers together. What are we going to talk about failing today? We don't have any guests today, but we do have a topic. What's the topic? Oh, today's topic is one that I hope resonates with everyone. We went back and we did our year in review, so as we're preparing for, you know, looking at our failures for our podcast throughout the year. There were many, there were all my goodness, where there's so many. So we'll record an episode where we talk about you're summarizing what we've done. But as we went through one thing that we learned was that when you're going into an episode, you got to have good notes. You got to have an outline, got to have an idea, and it kind of got us thinking, do we even take notes? And this episode, the title is I failed to take notes, and I got to say, "Shad, I'm not good at taking notes. Are you good at taking notes?" And I think I've ebbed and flowed with this throughout my career. Like in college, I think I was really good at taking notes. And I think early in my career, I was probably pretty good. And when I was an architect in a certain department at our company, I was really good at taking notes. Now, I think I'm terrible at taking notes. Terrible at it. And even though we know better, like it's note taking is one of those things where we think if we think back to one of our episodes, where we talked about a feedback loop. And the feedback loop for note taking is sometimes really quick. Like you'll you you should have taken notes. And then the next week, someone's going to ask you about something that you probably should have written down. And what do you do when that happens? You just show up to the meeting and pretend like what do you do, Shad? Yeah, I played dumb. I've gotten to the point in my career. I'm okay going with remind me what I'm supposed to have done, because I might have done it. I might not have done it. Or I might have done it. I don't know, but remind me of what I was supposed to do. But you didn't write it down and no one wrote it down for you. But maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. That's the other thing thing. I think we could talk about this in a little bit, but the places where we capture notes are all over the map these days. And it's worse now in the digital space, right? There's so many options. And I think what what happens is so many there's so many different options that so many people take notes in different ways. I might use this tool. One might use that tool. My own use an online tool. One might use email. They might use a chat. They might even use a text message. Yeah, you never know. So these notes are all over the place. So my notes of the conversation, right? Our notes are there. There's obfuscated across technologies. But my let me ask you this, do your notes represent you as a person on how you remember things? I think so. I mean, I've seen how you take notes. Obviously we work together a bunch. It's not the way I take notes. I use an outline method. So I tend to structure things and initially put them into an outline method, sub bullets, sub sub bullets, and then I'll rearrange them after after I'm done with the call. Okay, maybe I should have put this here that there, but initially I just do things in an outline format. That's the way I do things. I'm more of like a concept mapping or drawing. So I'll draw a lot of shared concepts or in general, I'll use the pictures to help remind me of the conversation. Because that's just the way I think. Like I'm a kind of a visual thinker, visual learner. I mean, I would say what you do is more of a the mind mapping thing. You do a mapping. You do it visually, but it's more of a mapping process you go through. Yeah, the problem is I don't have a true method for mapping. So there's times where I'll map like if I'm trying to map two concepts together, I'll draw a box. I'll draw another box. I'll draw a line between them and I'll say system. I won't take any additional notes between like what is this what is system A, what is system B? Like I, I'm just, I don't give myself enough hints to remind myself later, even though I know that I'm going to need the hints to remind myself later. Now when I was when I was leading a lot of customers, standing in front of a whiteboard and and having to organize a board, which was essentially a huge notebook, right, or page, there was definitely a different method I used then versus my own personal notes. Personal notes were very outline driven, whereas when I was leading a design session, it was very, I don't know if you want to call it category or section, but there was always the notion of, okay, I got to get all the goals and objectives out. What does it really want? What does you really want to accomplish? And then, by the way, which ones are really priorities? Do you really need this thing? Is this thing so important? What if you don't have it? Right, and then you can prioritize that list and that would give me the things to work through next. Right, okay, now I've done prioritizing what it is you need from a goals and objectives perspective. Now I can go into an actual design session and say, okay, this thing you said wasn't a very high priority, but now you're telling me it is, let's put it on the, on the architecture. And then the next section was so there was kind of the goals and objectives, the design, and then ultimately action items. What are the next steps? Right, what do we got to go do now that we've designed something? So it was a very structured way of organizing for customers the way that they wanted to see it. So do you think you spent more time in the method and the process because the notes are not just for you now there for someone else? Yes, they were a deliverable at the end of the day, they were a deliverable for customers. Okay, so it's kind of like the cost of taking bad notes in that case would be a lot higher because if you forgot something, somebody else might hold you accountable, or you know, you may not, you may miss something important that it was for someone else. Yeah, and I took more due diligence to maybe write on the board a little cleaner a little more legibly, a little bit more clearer and articulating what it is, we actually wanted to write down, whereas my notes today are, I don't even bother try to spell. I might use I might pretend like I'm texting myself and use, you know, those LOL, TXT, whatever, yeah, yeah, say along those lines. So yeah, I think it kind of depends on what's the purpose of the notes who they for. So can we go back to like the first time you were in the whiteboard, you're writing for customers before you knew the method. Like did anyone teach you that method or what have you learned along the way. Oh, I think yes, I was definitely taught that method mainly because this is how the deliverables needed to be handed back to the customer, right, it was very specific. And I think what I learned was how to be. To organize the board a little bit better and to write down only things that mattered. I think when I first started, I wrote down everything and then the board was ginormous. It was like reading a encyclopedia at the end of the day, right, and that was really too much. So I learned how to be efficient on what really matters and what needs to be written down. I think that comes with experience. I don't know that you can do that. Some people can't, I didn't, I wrote everything down because I didn't want to miss anything. And then I learned to be more efficient and be tight with the board, be tight with the notes. Okay. Now, if you were in the audience. Do you find that you take a different approach because now the notes, you know, they may not be for you. I'm sorry, they may be for you, but later on, have you ever had an instance where we're collecting notes, like my son, for example, in school, they actually grade him for notes, which is kind of odd to me. But in some cases, like, yeah, they grade them. If you take, if you take notes, like you actually get credit, it's kind of weird. Oh, but yeah, it's weird. But if we think about that, like that concept, like what if everyone in the audience had to take notes, then you had to collect all the notes, and then all of that would form what happened out of this meeting. How would you do, like if you were in the audience versus you were the one driving on the whiteboard. I have had to do this, and I think it's been hit or miss. Some people are very clear on their notes, and I understand them like, I think if I see somebody's notes that are written like mine, because I relate to it better that are outline format versus mind map format. I relate to those a lot better. If I get something, unless like your mind maps, when you're explaining it to me, makes sense. If I were to come in afterwards, unless there's notes on the mind map, I don't know what the heck you just did. Yeah, if I'm not there, it's like a cow and a crayon. He drew a cow here, and then he drew a dog over here, and then he circled the whole thing and it says system. I have no idea what he's talking about. I definitely have to be there. I think he is chicken and Bob in your trunks. If you don't know who chicken and Bob is, then you're lost. So to be fair, there are two hardest things in systems designs. When the work we do, you know, system design software, there are two hard things. The first one is naming things. The second one is cash and validation, but we'll just ignore that one for now. We're not going to talk about cash and validation, but naming things, naming things is hard. And there are times where a whole meeting will get stuck. Like your whole note taking process, your whole meeting gets derailed because no one knows what to call it. So what I've done is I come up with this method where I just give it a name. And even if it's a silly name, it seems like giving it a silly name will now force people to lock in on a real name. So like, for example, if they say or just move past or just move past an exact client, we can name that later. Doesn't matter. So chicken, we're going to call this chicken and everyone's like, oh, we can't call it chicken. It has to be, you know, system A is like awesome system A. And then who does this? And oh, it's this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, Bob. Okay, Bob, we just move on. So that's why I have chicken and Bob in my notes. So if you don't have the legend, you will know. That's right. You got to have notes on the mind map. Notes on the notes. You have to have an outline. So why do we do this? Why do you think we do? Why do you think we take notes? Is there a psychology? Is there like a thought process behind this? Well, yeah, it's ultimately to remember what you need to do, right? What decisions were made? You know, what's the priorities? I mean, ultimately, that's why I take notes, right? So I can remember what the heck I was supposed to do. But like I mentioned earlier in my career, I think I was better at this. And now I think I'm worse at it. And I would say, I don't know that it's a block, but I struggle to take notes. So I was listening to this. So I was listening to something and they kind of they hinted to this study. So I started reading the study. And what was wild was the hint to the study was that people read less. And with the digital age, and with summarization and chat GPT, and all the stuff that's happening now, people don't read anymore. And their attention span for reading has become a lot less. So people that write are writing for people that don't read. And what was crazy was I started trying to read the study. And I couldn't read the study. The study proved its point. But what's the acronym TLDR? Too long didn't read. So like in some cases, you're writing notes and you write them down. But like, do you ever go back and read them? Do you ever go back and reorganize them? And do they help? Like you said that you've been struggling with it. Like what is the part you struggle with? Is it just going back? Is it just taking notes? Like what is the part? It's the actual taking of the notes. Opening up my notebook and writing them down. The discipline. The discipline. Now, what I do go back and read them. Okay. I do go back and reorganize them. But sometimes I'm like, I just don't want to take these notes. I don't want to open my one note. Find where I've categorized these things. I know this section. I'm just going to create another page. Like, ah, it's too much. So do you think tools help? Because I know there's a lot of tools. And I've gone through a few different note taking tools. And I find that all I have now is my notes. Like you mentioned it. My notes are everywhere. So I think I think technologies made this harder. I mean, they've tried to make it easier. I'm not going to name pick on any specific tools. Let's just say there's a bunch of them. Right? And they come at you from different channels. There's email. There's chats. There's text messages. And by the way, there isn't just chats in the enterprise tools. You've got a bunch of tools like Signal and WhatsApp. And I mean, how many of those are there, right? Yes. There's chats everywhere. There's emails coming from everywhere. There's your actual notes that are coming from everywhere. There's AI tools generating notes, right? One of the worst things I hate to hear during the day is, hey, did you do all these things? And I go, what things? And they say it's in the chat. Which chat? I'm like, which chat? I have no idea what chat you're talking about. I got 100 chats. I'm working across right now. Which one? And then actually go back and find it in the chat. Is difficult. Now, the AI tools can kind of help, but you really got to prompt it correctly to give you the right stuff. So I do think AI tools can help. But they only have access to so much of it, right? Right. Across all those channels, they don't have everything. Right, right. And when we used to do these design sessions, what we would do sometimes is we'd elect what's called a scribe. And there'd be someone writing on the board and there'd be somebody scribing all the notes. And I remember early in my career, it was, it was okay to have a lot of people in a meeting because people had their different roles. But as we, as we move to a more digital age, where everyone's mostly remote, the whole concept of a scribe doesn't exist because everyone wants to speak. Everyone wants to be the center of attention and no one's scribing. So that becomes all right. The right tools are scribing, if you turn them on, if you turn them on, and if you, if you prompt them, but it also doesn't know what is the main topic. Well, if Bob was speaking, like was the asking, was Bob asking a question, was Bob adding notes, like what, what was actually Bob talking about? There are times where you're on a call. I don't know if this happened to you, but it's scribing. And it's scribing someone else on another call. It's because they accidentally left their call not on mute. Now you're bringing that context into your note taking. And yes, yeah. And now your notes are just completely all over the place. Yeah. So I do find that the AI notes do help. You got to review them. I would think within a day or so. So you remember? Yep. Oh, yeah, you're right. Somebody was on a call. They didn't mute themselves. And now it's picking up another conversation and throwing those notes in there. And you're like, what the heck? Yeah. We're talking about A. And all of a sudden these points come up about Z. And you're like, holy cow. What? Yeah. So if you look at those a month later, you're going to be totally confused. Yeah. And how's your typing, by the way? So I could move to an electric. You know, we used to go in with no pets. We'd go in with a. With a written note and a pen. And you'd free people out because like, oh, it's this old guy doing here with a pen. And then you try to go do a like your laptop. And then the whole beating. It's just. So you're. You're distracted, everyone. So what's your medium of choice when you take notes? If it's just me on a meeting, a virtual meeting. Right. I'm typing them out. Okay. So I'm opening up my notebook tool and I'm typing them in there. Are you taking screenshots? Are you taking? Yeah. I'm doing. I do screenshots. I type type notes. So yeah, I do a combination. I don't do mind mapping at all. Okay. It doesn't work for me. But I do outlines with screenshots all the time. Now, if I'm doing. If I'm leading a session, like I said, and using a whiteboard. I'm handwriting all that. So that's more deliberate. Okay. Because you're, you're handing it off. Right. You're doing essentially everyone's homework at that, at that point. Right. And there's no scribe. Like in, in your meetings, do you, do you elect a scribe? Have you ever used the. A scribe. We used to have a scribe in a lot of the meetings that we did. But that, for whatever reason, that's gone away. We don't want to be the scribe. I think, you know, kind of to this point. Like no one wants to be the person elected to be the scribe. And I just go. Because you had to sit there pay attention the whole day. You couldn't. You know, be distracted by looking at Facebook or something. Yeah. Exactly. Have you ever tried to be the scribe? No. No. So like this podcast, the one thing that we've learned throughout the, the recordings is that we started this concept where we create an outline prior to the show. And if we're doing interviews, we try to do like a kind of a quick sync with the guest. And we're like, OK, here's the type of stuff we're going to talk about. Here's the outline. And here's kind of how it's going to go. We don't stick to the notes. Like as strong as we should, but at least we have notes. And I think that's helped. I mean, what do you think, Chad? I do too. Yeah. We may not stick strictly to it, but it gives you kind of a guide, bumper rails, if you will. It's like when you go bowling, right? And you don't want to throw in the gutter. We put some bumper rails up. Yeah. So it kind of keeps us on track. Yeah. It may sound like we're just meandering, but we're actually not. We're sticking to a process and a flow that tries to hit on the key topic. We're meandering. Let's face it. We're idiots. So have you ever, uh, have you ever gone back and had your notes save you? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, many times. Mm hmm. Do you feel like a lawyer? You know, those lawyers in the movies where they just go pull out the sheet of paper. And they're like, Oh, I have the sheet of paper. Like do you feel like that? I do. Uh, I don't know. I wasn't thinking necessarily a CYA. I cover your ass kind of kind of scenario, but more like, um, I was supposed to do this thing or this thing was a higher prior than the other thing. And I'm focusing on the wrong thing because the priority was really not as high as it should be. I wanted to work on this thing because it was more interesting to me, but that's not really what the, what the task at hand should have been. So when I think did my notes save me, yeah, it's more from a, oh, should I be working on, am I working on the right things? Oh, okay. There, there has been times where there's been CYA. Absolutely. Yeah. Those are my favorite. Like I go back and go, nope, I have it in the notes. And someone says, no, no, I have it in the notes. And so it was like, no, no, no. Like, nope, I have it in the notes. Like Bob said, it's almost like a transcriber. Like I pulled out the, uh, I said, look, here's the chicken. Here's the chicken. Here's Bob. You're like a court of law here. Yes. Here's the evidence. Here's the evidence. Yeah. Absolutely. I've had those scenarios. But more, I think of it more. It's just saving me on, you know, things I should be working on versus not working on. Yeah. One thing that's also saved me is taking notes for things that I access often. So, for example, you know, in my business, I have my EIN number. And I have what I've done is because of all the numbers you need when you're running a business, you know, that you incorporate all this other stuff, I have a set of notes where I just keep all that information. And it's in one note, right? One specific section. So it's, you know, it's titled the name of my company and it has all my company information. Like, if ever I need to, you know, apply for a loan or, or, uh, you know, fill out a form or whatever, I have all of those things all in one place. So that's one thing that has saved me a lot. Yeah, I mean, definitely, I would say there's, there's notes that are, I'll say that are, you know, long running and you need that are fairly immutable like your EIN number and you're when you incorporate it. I mean, that you need that over time, but it's not going to change. Right. And then there's notes that are that you take are for the next, you know, they're only important for the next couple of weeks, or maybe the next week, or maybe you will only tell tomorrow. So they're transitory. Oh, that's a good point. So are those who are like to do's or like lists like what do you think there's a good balance between, um, you know, what's it to do versus a task? Okay. What's the difference? So, so for me, it to do is something that needs to be done this week or maybe today or the next few hours. Okay. Like it's like every week I got to go in and I got to prove time sheets. Okay. Like a grocery list. Like I got to go in. How do we get peppers? Or, or I'm in a meeting and they go, hey, can you send me a link to this presentation? Okay. Right. That's it to do. You know, and so for those actually, that's actually a good point. I actually will have a piece of paper or I'll use, um, on my computer. There's the sticky notes. Okay. I'll actually use sticky notes to write down to do's. Just quick. These are things that need to be done today or tomorrow. Got it. If there are things that are like more, you know, things that might be working over the next few months, I transition those into a true backlog and create tasks. I create backlog items. And those are, uh, if you're not the software world, it may not make sense to you. But essentially, it's a way to track track a long-term task that you may be working on for the next two, three, four weeks, maybe three months. What have you seek and track status of it? And so to me, those are things that you need to record because people are going to be asking about it. Got eyes are on it. Got it. So there are different kinds of notes. No, you are. Some notes are temporal where they just have a small period of time with their valid. Now with those temporal notes, how do you go back and archive? I can tell you, I'm terrible at taking notes, but I'm more terrible at reorganizing and archiving old notes. Like I still have, I bet you I can open up my no pet now. And I still have notes that I've taken back in like 2001, physical no pets. I still know what you do. I know you do. You got code. You wrote 30 years ago. I know. You're like a, you're a hoarder when it comes to that credit digital hoarder pack rat. But in my digital notes, I've got things that are temporal that are things that I was supposed to do. And I go back sometimes look at it and go, I already did that. And then I just move on. I don't delete it. I don't update it. I just walk out into that. How do you deal with archiving? Well, like I said, if, if it's something that's a transitory note that I only need for the next couple of days, I throw it in a sticky note and then I just trash them. Like I don't keep them. God, it's terms of long term projects. I never archived my notes. I'm just as bad as you are. I still have notes from. 15, 20, 25 years ago. Why do I have those? I don't need them. Well, we're chatting. It's got to sound crazy. I have a note here. We worked with a customer. December 16, 2015. 2015. That's nine years ago. Text to Mr Jackson related to insight meeting tomorrow. That was my meeting. That was my note. That was your notes. That's all you had. That's what I have. Okay. Looking to understand the cost difference. Oh, question mark. Is it an outline or did you do a mind map or is it just a sentence? I think that's your way of moving to video. Maybe I'll share this with other folks. But I would challenge anyone listening. Go back. Take a look at your notes. See what works for you. See what doesn't work. And you know, take a peek. See if you're a digital, you know, hoarder or digital pack right like I am. Or see if you're more of an organized, structured person with a lot more discipline, like chat. Yeah. I don't think I have discipline. Sounds like I'm better than you, but that's about it. Yes. Met with Shad Phillips out of Dallas. He has five accounts. That's my note. Oh, who's our 15 2015. How do you improvise without notes? What do you do? Do you have like a like when you when you show up and you know you're supposed to know something and you know you're supposed to write it down, but you didn't. You mentioned that you just played dumb, but have you ever pretended like kind of like, you know, the teacher is asking you if you took your notes and you're like, yeah, yeah, I took my notes. The dog at my homework. Like, have you ever done that? I have tried to to fake it through in the past. It usually doesn't work out that well. Because you get found out or you give yourself. Yeah, people figure you out pretty quick. Like he doesn't know why we're here. You know what we're talking about. We asked him to do five things. He did none of them because he didn't remember. Do you ever get defensive and go, I have it in my notes. What do you have in yours? No, I don't I don't typically do that. What I do now, like if I if I roll into him and we've all been there, right? Hey, you need to come to this meeting. I don't even know what this meeting is about. But you're supposed to know. So literally I will I'll just stop me. I go, can we can we back up here? What is the goal of this meeting? Like I'll I'll work I'll work the goals and objectives again. And usually from there if I was or taking out kind of remember what I'm supposed to do. And then I go, okay, yeah, okay. I remember all these things and maybe I can come up with a game plan to basically parlay it into another meeting because, okay, now we need to talk about these things. Decisions we make or the next steps. At that point, I'm really taking notes. I just got busted. Yeah, you just buy yourself more time. So you just have another meeting, right? Do you find that you hold your you hold other people accountable? differently than how you take notes. Like for myself, I hold my team. Really accountable for note taking and I get on them. If they didn't take notes, like if they didn't write anything down. But I tend to hold them up. It's more of a do as I say, not as I do type of thing, which is pretty bad. I should probably admit that. But I will check on the notes at all. I don't check on their notes at all. However, people need to write down their notes, go for it. Where I hold them accountable is when I when I transition into tasks. Right. So hey, I have I've put this into the backlog with your name on it. Where are we out on this thing? And now if they go, uh, remind me again, what I was supposed to do. What do you say? Yeah, well, it's in the backlog item. Here's the things that I wanted you to do. Here's when it's due. Here's who you're working with. So like I said, I'll take more notes and transition into a task or a backlog item. And basically assign people to it in every week. I review with them. Okay, where's this at? What are you doing? Would you need help? I mean. So yeah, those things. I hold them accountable to however they want to take. Some people are phenomenal at taking notes. Have you ever seen like what really good note taking looks like and just been all? Yes. Yes. Like there's one individual on my team. I ask him what he's been doing. I'm in literally in five minutes. There's an entire notebook coming my way of everything that he's done. Broken down by category specific notes. Dates, he did things. He's got times that we're taking beautiful notes. Yes. Actually, there's two people on my team that do that extremely well. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's, and then there's, you know, jokers like me who, you know. Right down, you know, gibberish. Yeah. Yeah. So the psychology behind note taking, I guess it kind of sounds odd to take advice from someone who's so awful to take a notes. But the psychology behind it is that you're trying to use many mediums to try to lock in the memories. So for example, when you're listening, that's one input. When you're reading, that's another input, you're using your eyes. When you're writing something, you're kind of invoking a bunch of different things, right? You're invoking the, your brain to write the thing down. You're reading it back. So that's number two. And then you're writing it down so that you can recall it for later. That's kind of number three. And there are other times where you have to tell someone else the note as well. Like, oh, hey, shed. Can I, you know, what'd you get for number four? And shout, oh, okay, I got from a fort. Great. So in that case, it's opposed to lock in more of the more memories for that. Do you find it that works for you? Like giving all the different things? Well, I agree. If it's, so if it's something, for example, that I'm taking a certification test on. Like, I will go through the learning material and I will force myself to write it down. If I will go through and take actively write notes again, I use outline format, but I'll write it down. And that I find that that helps me lock it in a memory better. I say I remember everything, but it helps me writing the notes as I'm reading it. Literally, and I do this on paper. I can't type it. Typing doesn't work to lock it in because I can, I can mindlessly type. But if I'm hand, if I'm writing it down, I have to think about it and it'll help me lock it in. Okay. So I absolutely, I find that that helps. Yeah. That works for me. Yeah. What works for me right now is I just, I hoard. I'll take screenshots. I will type things. I will audio. So I've also started a chat with myself. So I have a text chat with myself to remind me of things. I have a chat history with myself. And I started to just have a notepad where I just document ideas for myself, especially for the podcast. I kind of, I think about things and I have a conversation with myself. And what's odd is like, for now that's been working better than any other note taking is really just chatting with myself. So I wonder if, you know, I just, I should have been talking to myself the whole time. So, if you know people who've taken audio notes, like recordings, I know doctors are good at this, right? Where they have to document. So they do audio notes for, but don't they have somebody later writing that down, transcribing it into, into their notes. I don't think they're doing it. Sometimes, yeah, but they got to write it down. Like, oh, yeah, I met with, met with Shad and, you know, Shad's a psychopath note taker. It's like a bad disease. Yeah, my doctor's like, yeah, met with Shad, told him to stop eating steaks and fries. He won't listen to me. He's an idiot. Yeah. So there's that note taking. But the audio notes, I've known people who do take audio notes, daily voice messages for themselves. Or they use the note taking feature, the audio note taking feature on their phone. I've known people to do that. And what's odd is seeing that in public. When you see people talking into their phone to themselves in public on speaker. Have you ever seen that? I have seen that. And I've never done it. But now I'm starting to think maybe I should give this a try with all the new AI tools out there. I can just talk to AI. Give myself notes. Have it summarized anything of the week. I mean, you know, with AI, how's that going to change the way we could or should take notes? Yeah. So I think what we are learning is that, you know, that will help. But you have to treat AI a certain way. What we're learning is. AI can be what I call the old man in the corner. Which is just when you're so frustrated, you don't know what to think. And you don't know what to do. You just go, uh, AI. What do I do? And it just gets up and it goes, uh, do this. Right. And then there's the AI being your proper assistant, which I think what you're talking about. Which is, hey, remind me to talk about this or remind me to go pick up eggs or remind me to go do this. Or, um, hey, someone told me about this book. Remind me to go look it up or something like that. So there's kind of like, uh, kind of an, like a helper, I guess. Yeah. Like you're going to learn how to prompt the AI to help you. Yeah, there you go. That's the word I'm looking for. So we go. So it's a new tool that we're just, we're using incorrectly now. It sounds like. Yes. I can tell you I'm using it very incorrectly. Because I'm assuming it's just going to record everything and then magically be able to recall. Right. Yep. And what I'm learning is that AI is also just going to replay back. What I gave it. So if I beandered and told it a bunch of stuff that's incoherent, uh, that's what it's going to respond with. Incoherent chicken Bob. Chicken Bob system cow. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, I think that's, you know, notes in the digital age now. It's like, okay, we should probably be, we shall be learning how to prompt AI to capture our notes for us. Yeah. Especially if it's the kind where it's something we need to task, we need to remember. For, for taking notes for learning. I still think, you know, at least for me, I got to write it down. I don't know that AI is going to necessarily help me retain that information. I agree that. I agree with that. So, uh, challenge for everyone out there listening. Take a look at your notes and try to prompt your AI note taking apps. Maybe use different mediums. Maybe use audio. Maybe use video. And see if it helps. Also, there you go. There's a challenge. Thanks so much, Chad. Really appreciate your time. Take us out. All right. Thanks everybody. Hopefully you enjoyed learning hearing us meander and ramble on about our notes and different ways to take them and maybe how to take notes in the digital age. And we'll see you guys on the next one. Thanks for listening. - Thank you.