Note-taking

People are impressed by the most surprising things. Yesterday, after a fairly long meeting, I quickly typed up the notes and emailed it out (because I know from experience that if you have to do the minutes, it is always much easier to do it right after the meeting than the week after). Half an hour later after the minutes went out, while I was engrossed with some other troubling bit of work that was assigned to me during said meeting, the boss came in and said, "Good work. Very quick."

It took me by surprise because note-taking is so easy, compared with the other things they expect me to do, like make decisions about money, making a presentation full of sound and fury, digging up facts to bolster a talk, yada yada yada; yet for some inexplicable reason, they are impressed with this, when the rest is so much harder. All those years spent in lectures and classrooms filling up lined folscap paper must have come to something after all.