Memory keeps the feeling of a conversation and loses the details. You will remember that someone was funny and easy to talk to, but not that they were looking for a venue for a November birthday. The details are the part you can act on, so write them down while they are still easy to recall.

The best time to write a note is on a bench, on the train or in the café next door, before the next conversation pushes this one out. Keep it to four facts. More than that and you will stop writing.

1. Write their name and where you met, the event or the place.
2. Write one thing they care about, in their own words if you can remember them.
3. Write one thing you promised, or one thing you would like to follow up on.
4. Write the date you talked, so you can see how old the note is when you read it.

Use the same fields every time. Same fields make notes easy to scan, and they make it obvious when a field is empty. Here is a filled-in example for one person, with the details invented for illustration:

• Name: Dana Ortiz
• Met: Harbor Street market, October 4, at the coffee stall
• Cares about: running a food truck, the new permit rules for weekend markets
• Promised: send her the list of market organizers by Friday
• Next: check in around mid-December, before the holiday market season

Notes also help you spot patterns you would miss otherwise. Say you wrote four notes last spring about people who asked about venues for birthday parties. In the autumn, when a venue owner tells you her calendar is open in December, you already know which four people to call. Nothing about the venue changed. Your notes simply let you connect two conversations that were months apart.

Read that note in six months and you can write a useful message in two minutes. Without it, the same message takes a search through old texts, and some people are never found again.

Write facts that let you help the person later: what they do, what they are working on, what they asked you for. Leave out anything that would embarrass them if they read it, such as gossip, health details or opinions about their family. A good test is whether you would be comfortable if they saw the note. If you would not, do not write it.

A note with no date is a wish. Pick a reconnect date when you write the note, put it on your calendar, and make the message short enough to send from your phone. A good reconnect message refers to the note, offers one thing and asks one question. For example: I remembered you were looking at permits for the weekend markets. A councilmember I know is hosting a session on that next month. Want the details?

Be careful with notes about people who are not in the room. A note that says Sam is going through a divorce is a private fact you were told in confidence, and it does not belong in a shared file or an export that someone else might open. Write the detail that lets you be kind in person, such as Sam mentioned a hard year, and leave the story out.

Notes scattered across paper, a phone app and a spreadsheet get lost. Pick one place and move everything into it once a week. Connections keeps the notes on the contact itself. Open a contact and the Note about field asks you to write a note about the person, with the hint how you met and what to follow up on. Add Note saves it to that contact.

If you already have a list in a file, Connections has a contact import in its Settings screen, and an Export CSV option gives you a copy back. Keep the export somewhere safe, so the list is never only in one account.

Give yourself a weekly ten-minute slot to fix notes you wrote in a hurry. Most notes written at the event are a line too short. On Sunday evening, add the second fact you would have written if you had had time, such as the name of the person's business, or the thing they said they were trying to learn. The note gets better with each pass, and it takes less effort than writing a new one from memory.

Before your next event, spend ten minutes on the notes. This is the step that turns a list into a network. Work through this checklist:

1. Find every note with a reconnect date in the next 30 days, and send the message or cancel the date.
2. Look for people you met twice with no note the second time, and write one.
3. Pick two people you want to introduce to each other, and write that down.
4. Bring the names of the people you hope to see, so you can greet them by name.

Do not write nice guy or seems smart. Those notes help nobody, including you. Write the thing you would want someone to remember about you.

• How to follow up after an event, step by step
• How to start a local club or community group
• How to grow an email list from your events

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