Making good notes is not just a method for learning and easy remembering. Various kinds of note taking are useful at work, when writing reports, plans or simply when composing messages to clients. The hierarchy method will primarily show the hierarchies of certain tasks in an easy way, but it will also let you keep your notes legible in a clear and simple manner.

You ought to like this method particularly if you’re a visualiser. Thanks to a pre-determined way of writing, it’s easy to find the most important subjects in a note, though it’s worth remembering to keep using the same symbols in your drafts. But let’s start from the beginning…

The hierarchy method is a way of note taking that is mainly about:

  • writing on the left side and shifting successive less important points to the right
  • points are written down one after another, line after line
  • the more detailed the information, the farther it is from the left
  • ideas are divided logically into subgroups

It helps to consider beforehand what you want to write down in this way, e.g.:

Company marketing strategy

  1. Sponsored articles
  2. Social media
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Linkedln

By keeping the above structure, you can immediately see all the dependencies and what is the most important. You will quickly spot all the essential information, while the persons you address the message to will easily find their way through the information cluster. A clear structure is the greatest advantage of this method.

Of course, not everything can be recorded in this way, but once you order the subjects, then later it’ll be much easier for you to work on a given document. It is also a great method for writing short reports, emphasising certain reflections concerning projects or drafting meeting summaries.

We have already presented a number of note taking methods on our blog. We have written about the Cornell method, about the effective use of sticky notes as well as note taking during meetings and mind maps. Perhaps you have your own favourite methods? We’d be very interested in that – write about them on our Facebook!