Picture this scenario: you just got back from a great conference or educational event. You had a wonderful time, learned a lot, met new people, and took A TON of notes. There was an immense amount of great content throughout the event, so you were constantly scribbling down notes, bullet points or ideas that are applicable for your business or your life.

Except…you never go back to it. And instead of becoming a powerful tool to improve your business and life, the notebook now becomes a dust collection device that is never touched again.

Have you been in this situation before? You’re not alone. In the end, what we learn, and the notes we take away from conferences or events is useless unless we can formulate actionable items from the knowledge. With so many great events happening in our industry over the next few months, we thought this was a great time to share a way to deal with this problem.

In this blog, we’re going to share a strategy to help you put the knowledge that you’ve gained to use. In the spring, our team attended the EntreLeadership Summit, where author John Maxwell gave a talk about the ACTs and how they can help you create positive changes from your notes.

The ACTs

John Maxwell is a famous American author who has written numerous best-selling books about leadership. Maxwell came up with a strategy to help people take annotated notes and turn them into action plans. To do this, Maxwell encourages you to go through every note or bullet point you have, and put either an “A”, a “C”, or a “T” next to each. These are called the ACTs, and we break it down below.

A – Apply. Things that you can apply to your life or business. These are direct takeaways that have an immediate action that you can take right now.

C – Change. Changes that you can make to better yourself or your business.

T – Teach. Items or ideas that you can teach others in your life.

After doing this strategy, you will now have an entire book filled with bullet points of “ACTs.” But, you’re not done yet. At this point, the next step is to organize all of the bullet points into categories for each letter. Now, your applications, changes, and teachings are all grouped together.

Once they are together, the final step is to prioritize each individual item. This will help you understand what the most important applications, changes, and teachings are for you. Once you have your prioritized list, it’s time to get to work! Start with the top item on each list and slowly knock out each one. Over the next few months, you now have specific action items to take care of, based on your notes from the event.

This strategy helps you take a ton of information and find the best and most important actions for you to take after an event. As we all know, attending these events, in our industry or otherwise, can sometimes feel like drinking from a fire hose. If you’ve ever been overwhelmed with information after an event, try this strategy to help you get more done.