How to take notes on a webinar or training course you will actually use

Autumn is training season. Compliance refreshers, product webinars, conference sessions, the course your manager booked before the budget expired. Most of them produce notes, and most of those notes are never opened again. They are a transcript of the slides, which you could have downloaded anyway.

Useful training notes are short, and most of them are actions.

Do not transcribe the slides

If the slides or a recording will be shared, there is no reason to copy them. Ask for the deck at the start, or check whether the session is recorded. Then you are free to write only what the deck does not contain: what it means for you.

Write three kinds of line

During the session, capture only three kinds of thing:

1. Something to do. “Turn on two-step sign-in for the shared mailbox.”
2. Something to try. “Try the weekly review template from slide 14.”
3. Something to remember. A definition, a rule, a number you will need.

todo: enable 2-step for support@ mailbox by friday #training
try: weekly review template, slide 14 #training
note: retention for invoices is 7 years under our policy #training

Anything that is not one of these is probably in the slides.

Capture without leaving the session

On a PC, switching to a notes app during a webinar means losing the speaker’s video or slides for a few seconds. A capture box that opens over the session and closes again keeps your eyes on the content. In Jot, Ctrl + Shift + J opens it, Enter saves a line and keeps the box open for the next, and Ctrl + Enter saves and closes. If you are presenting or sharing your screen, Jot’s windows are hidden from capture by default; see hidden from the screen you share.

Ask your question in writing

If something is unclear, type the question into the session’s Q&A while you think of it. You get an answer on the record, and other attendees usually have the same question.

In the ten minutes after

Right after the session, go through what you captured:

• Give each “todo” a date.
• Turn one “try” into a todo, the one most likely to help. Leave the rest as notes.
• Delete anything that already looks less useful than it did an hour ago.

The single most effective thing you can do with a training course is apply one idea within a week. Pick it now, while you still care.

For required training

For compliance or certification courses, keep a short note of the date, the course name and any certificate, tagged so you can find it next year. That one line saves an hour when someone asks for proof. Combine it with a personal decision log habit if you make policy decisions based on what you learned.

Jot is on the Microsoft Store.

Jot is a quick-capture app for Windows: one hotkey, one line, back to what you were doing. What it is, or what is still unproven.