Why I’ve Started Taking Way Fewer Notes (and Why It’s Changed Everything)
Like most coaches, I used to take a lot of notes.
Constantly, actually. Pages filled with quotes, goals, insights, action steps. It felt professional. Responsible. Like proof that I was paying attention. And honestly, early on it helped. When I was still building confidence, writing things down made me feel grounded. Safer. I worried less about forgetting something important.
But over time, I started noticing a quiet tension.
The more I wrote, the less there I felt.
My eyes drifted down to the page instead of staying with the client. Silences that once felt spacious started to feel awkward — like something I should be filling with another bullet point. I was technically present, but my attention was split. Part of me was listening. Part of me was managing the record.
That’s when I decided to experiment.
I started taking far fewer notes. Sometimes just a word or two when something really landed. Sometimes nothing at all. Pen down. Laptop closed. Just me, the client, and whatever was unfolding in the moment.
I didn’t expect much to change.
But a few things shifted — and they changed the way I coach.
I Started Showing Up More Fully
When I stopped dividing my attention between listening and documenting, everything slowed down — in a good way.
I noticed the small things again. The slight crack in someone’s voice. The half-smile that covers uncertainty. The moment their shoulders drop when they finally say the thing they’ve been circling for ten minutes. I could stay with silence longer without feeling the urge to do something.
And here’s what surprised me most: I didn’t forget the important stuff.
What really mattered stayed with me because I was fully with it, not trying to capture it. It turns out deep presence is a far better memory system than my notebook ever was.
Clients Started Owning the Session More
Looking back, I think heavy note-taking can unintentionally send a message: I’ve got this — I’ll hold it for you.
When I stopped acting like the session secretary, clients stepped into more ownership. They came back to their own insights without prompting. They paused mid-sentence and said, “Wait… I already answered that earlier, didn’t I?” — and then laughed as they realized they knew.
It was subtle, but powerful.
They stopped outsourcing the remembering to me and started trusting themselves more.
Which, if I’m honest, took me longer than I’d like to admit to fully appreciate.
I Stopped Quietly Burning Out
This one caught me off guard.
All that note-taking carried a low-grade pressure I barely noticed at the time. Don’t miss this. Capture that. Prove you’re adding value. Even after sessions, there was the work of cleaning up notes, organizing thoughts, preparing for the next call.
Letting most of that go lifted a weight.
Sessions feel lighter now. I breathe more easily. I trust the client — and the process — more. And strangely enough, the coaching lands more deeply, not less. When I stopped trying to force value, it finally had room to emerge.
What the ICF Core Competencies Say — and Don’t Say — About Note-Taking
At some point, especially for coaches pursuing PCC or MCC, this question comes up:
“What do the ICF Core Competencies actually say about taking notes?”
The answer surprises a lot of people.
The International Coaching Federation Core Competencies don’t tell coaches whether to take notes or not.
There’s no rule. No standard. No best practice checklist.
What the competencies do emphasize — over and over — is presence.
They point us toward:
Maintaining presence
Listening actively
Cultivating trust and safety
Evoking awareness
None of those are about capturing information.
They’re about where the coach’s attention is and how the client experiences the coach.
For me, reducing my notes wasn’t about following a technique.
It was about aligning more fully with what the competencies actually value.
What I Do Take Notes On (When I Take Them at All)
At this stage in my coaching, if I’m writing anything down during a session, it’s rarely about the client’s problem.
My notes are almost always in service of two things:
The coaching agreement — what we’re here for, what matters most, and whether the session is staying aligned with that intention.
Active listening — a word or phrase that helps me track how the client is relating to their situation, who they are being in the context they find themselves in, or an emerging pattern worth reflecting back.
I’m not tracking issues.
I’m not documenting the story.
At a more masterful level, I’ve found that we don’t need to care nearly as much about our clients’ problems as we care about our clients.
The work lives in the relationship they have with the challenge — not the details of the challenge itself.
A Small but Important Distinction
I’m not saying zero notes, forever.
If something is time-sensitive, or the client explicitly asks me to write something down, I do. But the default has flipped. Notes now serve the moment instead of running it.
There’s one question I come back to whenever my hand twitches toward the pen:
What am I afraid I’ll lose if I don’t write this down right now?
Most of the time, the honest answer is: nothing that actually matters.
That simple gut check has done more for my growth as a coach than any new model or framework.
If you’re a coach who’s been feeling that subtle drag from over-note-taking, you might try easing off for a few sessions. Go gently. This isn’t really a tactic — it’s more of a trust fall.
But when it clicks, the work stops feeling like something you’re managing…
and starts feeling like the real conversation it was always meant to be.
By Jamie Slingerland MCC