Roblox exec prefers notebooks for meetings and to-do lists over tech

Grace Francisco was named Roblox vice president of
developer relations in April 2017.
Courtesy of Roblox

• Roblox executive Grace
  Francisco has been coding since she was a teenager,
  but when it comes to business meetings or note taking, she
  prefers pen and paper. 
• She uses two separate notebooks for work and to-do lists to adjust
  priorities. 
• Sheryl Sandberg, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson
  
  all use notebooks as part of their regular
  routines.

Roblox
executive Grace Francisco has made a career out of technology,
but when it comes to business meetings or note taking, she leaves
technology out of it. 

“I’ve been coding since I was a
teenager — 
but when
it comes to taking notes and tracking my to-do list
I go with paper and pen,”
Francisco told Business Insider. 

As the vice president of developer relations at Roblox, an online
video-game platform for
kids and teens
valued at around $2.5 billion, Francisco spends her days
focusing on accelerating the success of developers. While her
work is focused on the technical side of things, she omits
technology in work meetings. 

“Taking notes on a laptop
distracts from the meeting and can prevent you from really
engaging in a discussion because others in the room aren’t sure
if you are checking email or listening,” she said. 

Francisco has two notepads to
keep work notes and personal to-do lists separate. “This helps me
adjust my priorities and cross out things that are complete in a
clean way,” she said. 

“My most successful note-taking
strategy is to only write down the salient bits of a discussion
in my notebook, otherwise I don’t retain the information as
well,” Francisco said. “Similarly for my to-do list, I find
satisfaction in writing out a list day to day and feeling
gratification in crossing out those things I’ve
accomplished.”

Read more:
 
Here’s why writing things out by
hand makes you smarter

Handwriting notes is a slower
process than typing, which helps retain
information. Transcribing every word that’s said in a meeting
doesn’t require critical thinking, but writing down key phrases
by hand signals the brain that
a piece of information is important, Business Insider previously
reported.

Handwriting notes may seem
archaic in the tech world, but it’s a common organizational hack
used by at least a few successful CEOs and execs. Sheryl
Sandberg, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson
all use notebooks as part of their regular
routines.