Note Taking and CRS

Once upon a time, I was a green-as-Hell tech writer and copy editor.

It was my first government contractor career-related job, working for a small training company that may or may not still exist.1 It was run by a team of aging academics who grossly undersold their proposal bids to win work that barely paid the training developers, graphic artists, and tech editors tasked on the resulting contracts. The office was a curious mish mash of whatever furniture the former tenants left behind (in this case, an architectural firm with oddly-shaped large desks used for drafting plans), a few new pieces of furniture, and anything else that was bought from garage sales or purloined from a fruitful day of dumpster diving. Barely any of the conference room chairs matched. The dress code was non-existent, leaving most of us to wear almost anything we wanted – one graphic artist was known for walking around either barefoot or in flip flops while using a rope for a belt for his more-holes-than-fabric jeans.

Most desktop computers we worked on were often-recycled antiques that you spun around three times and spat while turning on, or Frankenstein behemoths cobbled together by the IT guy who spent most of his time taking naps under desks to look like he was working on the computers underneath. For the first three years there, we had to rely on our home email accounts and one dedicated dial up line per floor.2 It wasn’t until my fourth year there that they finally invested in an online network and official corporate email (made even worse by forcing them to buy almost everyone new laptops and desktops that could connect to and use the new resources).

The company’s management was notorious for keeping a tried-and-true set of pre-developed, on-the-shelf training courses and materials that were occasionally dusted off, given a metaphorical fresh coat of paint, and delivered to clients as brand new deliverables. While they did sometimes create new materials and content, their shameless modus operandi consisted of a set of well-worn MS Office products kept on their servers or in a hardcopy library.3

It's enough to say that my job at this place (barely) paid my bills, but I did learn a few valuable lessons while toiling away there.

One very important trail by fire was attending meetings, then being asked to deal with certain issues and tasks afterward. The problem is, I didn’t take any notes at those meetings, so it wasn’t unusual for me to piss off the already crusty and constantly irritable vice president who ran the day-to-day operations when I had to ask for details he assumed I already committed to memory at said meetings. Fed up with my inability to remember anything, he looked me in the eye and said:

“For the love of fucking God, never attend another goddamn meeting without a pen and pad of paper.”

As someone who was only months of grad school, new to entering the general workforce, and one of the many intimidated by that vice president, I took his advice to heart. Bear in mind, this was a man who knew and used his tall stature, fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows, and gruff voice and demeanor to scare employees, but he was also the one person everyone universally respected because he was smart and practical about our work…especially when we got it done quickly without too much bitching and moaning from our project managers.

Admittedly, they held meetings so mind numbing and could’ve easily just been an email that my note pad was typically little more than a tool for alleviating my boredom through doodles and sketches, but I still had it with me in case I actually needed to write something down. As time went on, and I made the minor step up from tech writer/editor to project coordinator, the habit of keeping paper and pen with me at meetings very much established my faith in the old adage “I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

Of course, I moved on to my proposal career, and as any proposal pusher worth their salt will tell you, taking notes before, during, and after the many meetings we attend or run is an absolute necessity. We have so many balls to keep up in the air while spinning plates on poles and riding a horse backwards while blindfolded, that keeping track of all the little details on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis is what makes the difference between merely capable and rock star proposal managers (as well as successfully submitting a solid proposal...or having one blow up in your face).

I’ve met a few people whose minds are marvels of memory, recalling exact words from encounters that happened even years earlier, but knowing I frequently suffer CRS from even a few minutes later means I need to take notes.4 I’ve shamelessly burned through so many pads of paper at so many jobs over the years that I’m sure there are whole forests that bear a grudge against me, but note taking has saved my ass many times.

Of course, these days, it’s almost standard operating procedure for people to bring phones, laptops, or tablets to meetings, or to run meetings remotely via Teams, Zoom, and Skype calls. The net result of this for me as a proposal manager is I now keep a MS Word window open on my machine for notes, though I sometimes forget to hit mute so other online meeting attendees don’t hear me typing away. And I cannot stress enough how wonderful it is that Teams records and transcribes meeting calls…even if the transcriptions are a little wonky (and between current “AI” products having obvious flaws and not quite capable of becoming Skynet to pre-emptively nuke mankind or turn us into living batteries for Keanu Reeves to liberate means I’m not really worried about AI these days).

Of course, taking notes isn’t just a fact of life with meetings. I can’t count how many times I’ve read through RFPs, office documents, books, and even magazine and newspaper articles, writing down notes for later reference. Not to mention the many interviews I’ve had with candidates for a job or picking the brains of various contract professionals for rebid opportunities. There are so many times where that pen and paper hit the desk or table before I’ve sat down or shaken hands with the other person.

Now, do I still doodle when a meeting is lacking my attention or not needing it in the first place? Sure, but you better bet that I’ll have a pad of paper with me or MS Word open on my laptop in case some c-suite curmudgeon corners me later about some little detail from moments ago that my fastidious brain has already forgotten.

?

1 Last I checked, the company was reduced down to one person whose sole job was wrapping up whatever few remaining contract tasks existed for their handful of clients.

2 Each office was affixed with a signal system that blinked red whenever someone was using the dial up line to access the internet. This was a nuisance at best, and maddeningly huge frustration at worst. Especially after one tech writer advanced to programmer and tied up the line all day, whether or not they were actually working online or just trading instant messages with friends, leaving the rest of us at their self-serving and uncaring mercy.

3 As the entire company was populated by runners up for an episode of Hoarders, they habitually kept and stored almost any and everything they ever made or used. One of my many thankless busy work jobs was going through several closets filled to almost comical levels of barely-being-able-to-close-the-door piles of boxes and scattered minutia. In my efforts to throw out, reduce, and organize all of that stuff, I found hardcopy printouts of client assessment surveys that dated back to when I was in high school, long forgotten various holiday decorations, and eight inch floppy disks that one person took home and used for target practice on their gun range.

4 In case you don’t know that one, “CRS” elegantly stands for “Can’t Remember Shit” – a condition frequently shared by the elderly, incompetent executives, and overworked proposal professionals.