My approach to taking notes in meetings

I think every brain might be wired differently and a different approach might work better for some people.<p>But if I&#x27;m trying to make notes in a meeting, I can&#x27;t listen to a speaker argue some nuanced point in a meeting while furiously trying to jot things down.<p>An approach that works for me is to have the meeting and try and pay undivided attention to it, then have 5-10 uninterrupted minutes at the end while everything is in short term memory to summarize it. If somehow I don&#x27;t remember a point, it&#x27;s usually not important enough to write down.<p>I&#x27;d say if 2 people in a meeting take that approach and and consolidate their notes at the end, you&#x27;re going to get a complete picture of what just happened.

I often have (virtual) meetings with clients, and there may be 3-5 people of their team on the call, and I might have a colleague also there.<p>To make sure meetings aren&#x27;t a waste of time, each of our clients has a Gitlab space on our self-hosted Gitlab, and while screen-sharing, I open their Board, which is in a sense the meeting agenda.<p>Then I open each issue, and I take notes while they are talking. If the discussion is too quick, I stop folks and tell them &quot;one second, we should write this down, it&#x27;s important but I&#x27;ll forget&quot;. And before moving to the next topic, I ask every-one to validate.<p>Towards the end of the meeting (usually 30-45 mins), we then go back to the board, and re-prioritize if needed.<p>In parallel, I have a paper todo list, where I write down the issue numbers that I really need to prioritize, or other notes that the client should not see.<p>Obviously this does not work for all types of meetings, but we also do this for our internal company meetings and it&#x27;s fairly efficient. In the past I would only use paper, but I ended up with lots of paper that I lost track of.

I&#x27;ve used this method since the early 1990s:<p>1) Use no tech.<p>2) Cornell-inspired note-taking paper with topics in the left margin and speaker names&#x2F;notes&#x2F;sub-topics in the main body. There&#x27;s room for mind maps if you wish.<p>3) Actions go in the bottom field so they are easy to find later and mark off when done. If you need to reference something in the body notes for follow-up or action (because you don&#x27;t have time to write something at the bottom of the page), put an A in a circle next to the relevant sentence.<p>4) Meeting notes are stapled together and filed in chronological order in a ring binder, divided by working group&#x2F;meeting name or topic. You can then remove a bunch of notes from previous meetings to take into the current one for reference.<p>Here&#x27;s a Word doc of my blank Cornell-type paper:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;linker3000&#x2F;Cornell" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;linker3000&#x2F;Cornell</a>

<i>&gt; The way I would capture an action item during a meeting would be to underline (if handwritten) or bold (if typed) the part in the note and commit it to memory. Important things would always get remembered by the very nature of being important, but the slightly-less-important-but-still-valuable items would often slip my mind.<p>&gt; This was the difference between being good and great at my job. It’s the stuff that, when missed, no one really notices, but when you’re on top of it, people think you’re superhuman.</i><p>Before starting work at a large company, I would have scoffed at the idea that &quot;remembering little stuff&quot; could ever be &quot;superhuman.&quot;<p>Now? I&#x27;m right there with the author. The people I work with who consistently come to meetings with updates like &quot;oh, and I took care of &lt;small-but-important thing&gt;&quot; are my heroes.

I do something similar to the hybrid approach.<p>Instead of simply noting concerns, I ask if there is an actionable item, then note the action.<p>&gt; CL: I don’t think Azure AD is the right choice for end user auth<p>would become<p>&gt; CL raised concern about Azure AD option, @RF to revisit specific concerns with stakeholders by EOD tomorrow.<p>(the action would be highlighted for followup task assignment as appropriate).<p>Note: this approach is more appropriate for small-runway implementation projects with decision makers (or empowered individuals) attending, where decisions need to be made quickly or escalated.

In my opinion note taking should be a collaborative effort. All members of the meeting sharing a notepad together, and ideally even the meeting agenda is populated with headings before the meeting starts, allowing everyone to add notes below each heading (and keep it moving along and on task)<p>After approaching meetings this way I rarely need for my own personal notes. Just a personal reminder&#x2F;todo list.<p>Shared notes lead to a shared understanding, and a shared set of actions. It&#x27;s really quite helpful, especially in remote settings.

The country where I’m from, the de facto corporate culture trains the junior employees to furiously scribble down notes as a manager&#x2F;executive is speaking, as a formality and sign of respect. How much these notes are legible and useful will vary widely, I’ve seen some laughable ones, but it is a positive social tool to enforce the act of listening.

Here&#x27;s my shorthand. Google docs. Nested by topic, use ldaps, use &quot;AI (action item)&quot; to assign tasks.<p><pre><code> ldap1: This thing * ldap2: No that thing * ldap3: Because of this reason * AI(ldap1): Fix that thing ldap3: What about X? * ldap1: I think X is at risk * ldap2: We have an alternative from [this vendor](link) ... * AI(unassigned): Investigate vendor alternative to fix X </code></pre> It&#x27;s quick and easy to edit&#x2F;share.<p>Google Docs creates TODOs automatically around &quot;AI(ldap)&quot; and correctly attributes them.<p>If you&#x27;re in a multi-stakeholder meeting, you can present the notes and even have multiple people backfilling with links, screenshots, etc.

The conversation between MT, SW, and whoever else it was in the beginning of this article is the most useless business jargon I’ve ever heard. Why would you ever take notes like that? When our marketing team starts using words like velocity and alignment, we just start rolling our eyes at each other and I know they are going to ask for money.

I cannot multitask. At all. Listening and writing are two different tasks and I cannot do both at the same time. If you ever see me writing in a meeting you can know 100% that I am not able to listen to anything being said while I am writing. I am amazed by people who seemingly can both write and listen at the same time.

I am looking at this witful product UI and I wonder what stops MS to make interfaces like this in office products. Their UX is so awful in most of products. They have huge customer base, data and products to create great experience. Then, why?

IMO it&#x27;s generally more of a tooling problem than a methodology problem... like trying to build a skyscraper without power tools.<p>The main challenge with taking notes during meetings is that the tools use were designed for drafting in a non-linear environment. But notes in meetings are directly related to the content of what is being said at a specific moment in time, and the text-only notes usually fail to capture the full essence compared to watching that part of the video.<p>When building my last start-up, an online school on Zoom, we recorded every lecture so our students could go back and review the content during the working sessions. But they found it hard to correlate their Google Doc notes with the moment in the recording they wanted to go back and watch. But since we pulled over the Zoom chat log with timestamps back to moments in the recording, they started taking notes there so they could keep track of the part they knew they wanted to watch later or reference.<p>Long story short, when the online school got acquired I started my current start-up <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grain.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grain.co</a> to turn that insight into software anyone could use to better capture and share knowledge during any kind of meeting.

Meetings: The activity of people hearing themselves talk. I think I stumbled here or in lobsters with this site: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justingarrison.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2021-03-15-the-document-culture-of-amazon&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justingarrison.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2021-03-15-the-document-...</a> Very apropos to the effectiveness of meetings and of course ,note taking towards creating long term value.

You&#x27;ve been looking for <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mindup.co&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mindup.co&#x2F;</a>. I met Jonathan, their CEO a couple weeks back... he&#x27;s one of the most down to earth founders I&#x27;ve ever met... he help create #yesphx... and a couple other startups. I&#x27;m requiring our entire company to start using his product this next quarter.

For me, I really like Zoom recording paired with the automatic transcripts. The transcripts help me to find the section of the video I need to review. I wish there was a feature to tie your typed notes into the video timecodes so by clicking on a note I had made, I could jump to the point in the meeting where I had made the note.

Take a picture of the whiteboard at the end of a constructive discussion and email that to everyone.<p>The absolute worst thing is someone with a laptop struggling to type everything down, or everything they feel like transcribing, and not participating in anything.

I&#x27;ve found that in meetings, I mostly just need short quick notes. I don&#x27;t need entire documents and structure. Instead, I jot down a few of the most important key ideas and action items. After the meeting, I add my action items into my todo list.<p>Working on bytebase.io - the fastest notepad for engineers. With Bytebase you can jump into a timestamped meeting note in one keystroke and bucketize individual items afterwards.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intercom.help&#x2F;bytebase&#x2F;en&#x2F;articles&#x2F;4587207-meeting-notes-in-bytebase" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intercom.help&#x2F;bytebase&#x2F;en&#x2F;articles&#x2F;4587207-meeting-n...</a>

I love taking meeting notes on pen&#x2F;paper, and my colleagues, clients love them too. I used to write mostly text -- bullet points, keywords, figures, etc.<p>I started moving more towards sketches that depicts the idea, relationships, and the likes. I have suggested the books by Dan Roam[1] earlier and I&#x27;d still recommend them today.<p>Today, for instance, if I&#x27;m in a meeting for a product feature; by the end of the meeting, my notes are usually the starting point for the product team (designers, engineers) to get started.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.danroam.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.danroam.com</a>

Don&#x27;t do as I did... I decided to use my iPad Mini with pencil to take notes at an important meeting, and the handwriting recognition worked really well. However, just to be sure&#x2F;safe, I decided I&#x27;d also switch on the voice recorder app as well. Unfortunately, at the end of the meeting I had my notes, but also 30 minutes of pencil-tapping noises with barely-discernable voices in the background. I won&#x27;t do that again...

Some of these techniques are impressive, but they don’t work for me. My notes take the form of drawings: flowers, aliens, bugs, geometric diagrams—whatever makes it look like I’m paying attention and prevents my forehead from violently impacting the table.

I imagine the act of writing a summary of the conversation rather than verbatim allows the brain to do some work to understand the gist of the meeting, which will help recall even without revisiting the notes.

dear Witful:<p>Dropping user tags and only having essentially 2 hardcoded types of auto-tags - timestamp + people ?<p>mmmmh. And Where to put the yellow&#x2F;pink&#x2F;.. sticky-notes?<p>Tagging&#x2F;categorisation is a slow postprocessing - weekly, monthly, yearly. i keep reorganizing my mails from last 25 years. including pruning. Same for my pictures. Most stay as they were, but some change coordinates sometimes. As i may have changed.<p>yeah, one may say meetings and notes usualy don&#x27;t last years.. except when they do because are actualy important. Should i invent DIY tags in title?

I take all my meeting notes on Agenda ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;agenda.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;agenda.com&#x2F;</a> ). It links the notes to the calendar events.

why are meetings special ? If you have a thought that you want to revisit later, but think may not remember to, put it on a list. If you read something on the internet you want to revisit later; bookmark it, or put it on a list. Do the same with meetings. If you hear something worth putting on a list, do it.

Skip the meeting saying you have another meeting to attend to,<p>later ask for &quot;Action Items&quot; &quot;Meeting notes&quot;.

Record everything, voice to text every conversation.