Entertainment
How Note-Taking Helped Kendrick Lamar Become Insanely Successful!
Kendrick Lamar has won more than 160 awards, 399 nominations, 13 Grammy awards, and 6 Billboard music awards, all just at the age of 34!
Kendrick Lamar has been ranking #1 on Billboard 200 Album Charts in 2022. What some people may call ‘creativity’ is nothing but sheer perseverance, determination, and a good habit.
Lamar has a habit of taking notes, whenever he meets new people or visits new places. This helps him keep his thoughts in check and preserve his memory for longer than he otherwise could.
I have to make notes because a lot of my inspiration comes from meeting people or going outside the country, or going around the corner of my old neighborhood and talking to a five-year-old little boy.
And I have to remember these things. I have to write them down and then five or three months later, I have to find that same emotion that I felt when I was inspired by it, so I have to dig deep to see what triggered the idea. It comes back because I have key little words that make me realize the exact emotion which drew the inspiration.
- Kendrick Lamar
A video shared by a blogger named ‘David Perell’ on YouTube, emphasizes the importance of note-taking and building up your creativity through the process. Perell shares a brilliant quote —
Taking notes increases the shelf-life of your thoughts!
It is true because you can only remember so much. As Product Designers, we are always advised to present less than five options for the users to choose from. A human mind can’t store everything, and this is what we call the Cognitive Load Theory (CTL).
As per CTL, a human brain’s working memory has a limited capacity and should be used carefully. Everything that is designed in today’s world, is trying to make some space in your working memory.
From the advertisements that you look at to the movies and series you watch. Everything is trying to grab your attention. In such a distracting world, how do you plan to be creatively productive? You can’t. Unless you develop habits like taking notes.
With such distractions increasing in your everyday life, it will become impossible to retain your memory even for a few hours. You will tend to forget what you were thinking about, just a couple of hours ago.
But if you take notes, you will not only remember, but also will be able to re-use those ideas later, build upon them and enhance your creativity. This is how super-talented people work.
The truth is — many of them are not born prodigies. They just learn to store their best ideas and don't let them escape their vicinity. Even if they are not able to store them in their minds, they will store them on a piece of paper.
Even the best writers on Medium, have shared their habit of taking notes whenever a genius idea strikes their mind.
Some writers even have a water-proof marker at hand while they’re taking a shower. Because the best ideas strike when your mind is most relaxed, and a shower is commonplace for everyone to produce the best thoughts!
Note-taking has more benefits than you can imagine —
- Improves focus — By taking notes, you can improve your attention to detail and enhance your focus on things.
- Promotes retention— Your mind will become sharper as you start taking notes, and you will remember more than you otherwise could. Note-taking is also a skill taught and practiced in Indian schools to make children ‘remember’ their classroom notes and prepare for exams.
- Improves prioritization skills — This habit helps you learn how to prioritize by focusing on important things, and discarding the irrelevant stuff.
- Enhances organization skills — Your organization skills will be enhanced if you start taking notes, as you will learn how to prioritize things.
- Boosts creativity — Note-taking helps boost your creativity and makes you think deeper about the ideas you sketched. You can also test the limits of your own mind by building upon one initial idea and converting it to a piece of art — like a painting, a song, or even a Medium story!
Lamar confessed that he does not sit in one place to generate his content. Rather, he writes, he takes notes all the time. There is no defined time or place for him to work. He works with his subconscious mind, writing songs that the world falls over for!
Ideas do not pop up when you sit down and wait for them. They pop up when you are living your normal life. You might have thought about some of the best and most creative ideas of your life, while you are taking a walk.
But if you don't write them down, by the time you reach home, your mind will be occupied with ten other tasks and you will forget about them. That is where note-taking comes in.