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Comment by scottkrager | Hacker News Reader

"5. You don't have to take notes"

I agree with that one, I love taking notes at events and conferences. After a one-day conference I'll end up with a few pages of notes, and when I get home I type those into a few actionable items, bam!

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There have been studies that have found the opposite. If you write things down, you are more focused on writing/reading than actually listening to the speaker. Its the repetition that actually helps you remember, so reading the published notes afterwards or listening to the recording would be best.

Except that's not something that PG says, in general. I think that in this case, he was pretty clearly saying "the talk will be online" in an idiomatic manner.

In my experience PG errs toward the side of putting too much emphasis on taking notes, honestly. (This is probably because he works better when he takes notes, and he's seen a lot of YC founders forget/ignore his advice when they don't write it down.)

I'm sure many people do benefit from taking notes but I'm convinced that pg most likely wasn't dismissing note taking in general. I think he was more likely to be meaning you don't need to write down every word he says, akin to almost transcribing the talk - well this was my take on it anyway. Basically he was implying that the substance of the talk will appear in a later essay, which it did. To me, with this point in particular, the author of the article appears to be trying to find something (anything?) to take issue with, which in my opinion makes me value his other points a little less favourably.

Personally, I find notes are a distraction. Every time I try to take notes while someone is talking, I find myself more focused on writing things down than actually trying to comprehend what they're saying.

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