Comments on: Tips for taking meeting notes

By: Alan Westbrook

Alan Westbrook — Sun, 29 May 2011 03:18:49 +0000

Since getting my hands on an iPad 2 I no longer use paper.
I use Notes Plus to record a discussion or meeting and make brief notes.
Because this app allows you to jump to the place in the audio that your notes were taken, you can avoid listening to the whole meeting and just remind yourself of the detail of specific topics.
Then it’s just a matter of processing the notes into OmniFocus before deleting the note, though they could be archived or emailed if you’re that way inclined.
Seamless and easy.

By: Ronda Levine

Ronda Levine — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:15:42 +0000

I use those yellow legal pads for meeting notes. I mentally divide the sheet into three areas. The first area is the top margin and about 3-4 lines down. This is for action items that come up during the meeting. I write “AI” (action item) and then what needs to be done to further identify it. Then, the rest of my sheet is divided in half lenghtwise. The left half is maybe 2 inches for my own thoughts and ideas that come up during the meeting (Q: question), (I: Idea), (!: important). The rest of the paper is for taking notes. I developed this while in Grad school and it helped a lot.

By: Vishu Ramanathan

Vishu Ramanathan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:42:49 +0000

I wrote a little more about the separation between collect and organize on my blog:
http://thinklinkllc.com/blog/33

By: Shawn Callahan

Shawn Callahan — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:05:43 +0000

Here I am sitting comfortably with the Christmas tree an arm’s length away and all the presents unwrapped. I’m browsing through these terrific note taking suggestions on my mac and I realised I have one tip you might like. You can write your notes in the form of stories and they will be more than 20 times more memorable than dots points alone.

By: Jacki Whitford

Jacki Whitford — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:24:39 +0000

I am in meetings almost 8 hours a day – either hosting them getting people to accept action items, or helping make decisions in other meetings getting action items myself. I always make sure my meetings and other peoples have a clear purpose and agenda and that the right people are on the call. You do not want to waste people’s time with multiple meetings. When I take notes, I do it online in the agenda and I add action items. Then at the end of the meeting I recap the action items, assign people, set dates for them to be accomplished and the date and time for the next meeting. I send the meeting minutes out after the call. Then I move all the action items for me to the correct GTD categories and get mine done before the next meeting.

By: Alexandra

Alexandra — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:45:16 +0000

I have a paper to do list. As new to do items arise during meetings I write them directly onto the to do list rather than once in my notes and copied into the to do list. I use Levenger paper with a wide left margin; meeting notes are on the right in outline form; ideas, questions, doodles are in the left margin.

By: Kelly Forrister

Kelly Forrister — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:21:49 +0000

Gene, you asked: I’m confused by the tip. Is the mindsweep page a summary of action items? Or is it something separate and distinct from the meeting notes?
>>Both. It’s a place for action items that come out of the meeting, and random mindsweep items that occur to me during the meeting.
Thanks to all for contributing your tips! Great stuff.
-Kelly

By: Vishu Ramanathan

Vishu Ramanathan — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:35:42 +0000

My #1 tip for meeting notes: separate collection from organization

For paper note taking, drop your notes in your inbox when you’re done and take the time to process them.

I use and recommend many of the in-margin techniques people mention here to make processing my notes easier. But the critical improvement for me was to get into the habit of processing my notes after every meeting. It doesn’t actually take that long.

The Cornell method is a specific way to process and review your notes on a single sheet of paper. If you have a paper based work system it’s the way to go.

I use an outliner (thinklinkr.com – full disclosure, it’s my product). During a meeting I make sure I capture everything that’s relevant. Then I organize the information in the outline and it serves as the meeting notes. The nice thing about using an electronic tool instead of paper is that it’s easy to edit and move things around. Lately I’ve gotten good enough at it so that i can usually process everything during the dead time in meetings.

By: Paul Richards

Paul Richards — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:43:24 +0000

I use a – at the start if a new actionable item. When I’ve transferred it to my system I turn it into a so I know it’s marked off.

By: Andrew Wilcox

Andrew Wilcox — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:40:53 +0000

I take notes at meetings using MindManager in Ink mode on my Tablet PC. The agenda (pasted from a Word document or email) forms the skeleton of the map. The attendees can be added as a resource list to a topic prior to the meeting making it easy to add them as action owners during the meeting. Map markers can be used to prioritise and categorise items. Map parts to add repeating structures e.g. weekdays, departments. Topic Alerts can be used as post meeting reminders which also become Outlook appointments.

After the meeting I convert the ink to text, adding information and relevant links to web pages and documents. Depending on the audience for my notes I can publish as a map or export to Word (where actions appear in neat task tables) or to a web page.