Better note-taking in meetings
February 8, 2023 2:18 AM Subscribe
As part of my job, I sometimes have to take notes at meetings which I then type up into formal minutes. I also often take part in meetings where it would be useful to have contemporaneous notes to refer back to later.
My problem is that I am terrible at contemporaneous note-taking. My handwriting is awful, my notes often make no sense, even to me, and generally I just feel this is a skill that I have somehow never picked up in mumblety-years of working in professional roles.
I generally make notes with pen and paper, and either type them up later in MS Word (if formal minutes are required) or scan the hardcopy to pdf if I just need a written record of the meeting.
The types of meetings I'm talking about vary from management meetings with about ten people around a table going through an agenda, or one-on-one meetings with team members.
Specifically, I feel that I can either participate in the meeting or take notes, but I am not good at doing both at once. When I review notes after the fact, I often feel that they don't capture the substance of what was actually said/decided.
My question is: How do I get better at this? What techniques do people use to take notes in meetings which really work? I would be happy to switch to using an Apple pen/iPad combo to make electronic notes, but that falls down if the actual content of my notes is no better than what I would be producing with pen and paper. If you are someone who is good at this, how do you do it?
I generally make notes with pen and paper, and either type them up later in MS Word (if formal minutes are required) or scan the hardcopy to pdf if I just need a written record of the meeting.
The types of meetings I'm talking about vary from management meetings with about ten people around a table going through an agenda, or one-on-one meetings with team members.
Specifically, I feel that I can either participate in the meeting or take notes, but I am not good at doing both at once. When I review notes after the fact, I often feel that they don't capture the substance of what was actually said/decided.
My question is: How do I get better at this? What techniques do people use to take notes in meetings which really work? I would be happy to switch to using an Apple pen/iPad combo to make electronic notes, but that falls down if the actual content of my notes is no better than what I would be producing with pen and paper. If you are someone who is good at this, how do you do it?
Would it possible/worth your time to record the meetings and just note at the meeting when there are bits where you need to take more complete notes later? How much could you get from computerized transcription?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:24 AM on February 8, 2023
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:24 AM on February 8, 2023
Specifically, I feel that I can either participate in the meeting or take notes, but I am not good at doing both at once.
This was the issue I had for a long time and my solution was to record the meetings in a voice memo app and replay them — maybe later that day, while they were fresh in my mind — and type up the minutes. Would this be a feasible solution?
Or on preview, what Nancy L said.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:27 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
This was the issue I had for a long time and my solution was to record the meetings in a voice memo app and replay them — maybe later that day, while they were fresh in my mind — and type up the minutes. Would this be a feasible solution?
Or on preview, what Nancy L said.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:27 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
Is there any reason why you can’t record the meeting? That’s what we’ve moved to at my workplace - we tend to have meetings via Teams and just record in there. Before that, some note-takers used to bring a dictaphone to meetings to record. It doesn’t mean you can’t make basic notes during the meeting, but is very useful if you miss something or get caught up in discussions. Also - it’s very difficult to properly take part in a meeting and be the person who takes notes effectively! I don’t know many people who could do that without finding it very difficult & stressful.
Or on preview, what Ricochet Biscuit said :-)
posted by amerrydance at 3:27 AM on February 8, 2023
Or on preview, what Ricochet Biscuit said :-)
posted by amerrydance at 3:27 AM on February 8, 2023
Lately I have been in meetings where the agenda is copied into a google document that is edited with content, decisions and action items as the meeting progresses. Everyone can add to it but someone is primary.
posted by childofTethys at 4:06 AM on February 8, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by childofTethys at 4:06 AM on February 8, 2023 [16 favorites]
Best answer: When I review notes after the fact, I often feel that they don't capture the substance of what was actually said/decided.
As you say, this is what I think distinguishes "meeting minutes" from "good meeting minutes". The latter contain a very clear summary of actions, who is going to be doing those actions and by when, also any key decisions made. As a minute taker I think you need to do three things:
1. Type up short notes rapidly during the meeting. It helps to be able to touch type fairly rapidly to do this and specifically practising that might help. Automated tools such as recordings or speech to text summarisers may help to provide an additional record - but they are not as efficient as a typed notes, IMHO.
2. Try to take a step back from getting involved in points yourself, so as to focus on guiding the meeting in a direction that encourages people to clarify anything unclear and to assign action items and deadlines for any promised points. It can help to have some meeting ground rules agreed before.
3. Immediately after the meeting - before you forget the details - write up the notes and share them. Don't make that document (or the meeting) longer than one you would want to receive yourself in an email.
posted by rongorongo at 4:16 AM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
As you say, this is what I think distinguishes "meeting minutes" from "good meeting minutes". The latter contain a very clear summary of actions, who is going to be doing those actions and by when, also any key decisions made. As a minute taker I think you need to do three things:
1. Type up short notes rapidly during the meeting. It helps to be able to touch type fairly rapidly to do this and specifically practising that might help. Automated tools such as recordings or speech to text summarisers may help to provide an additional record - but they are not as efficient as a typed notes, IMHO.
2. Try to take a step back from getting involved in points yourself, so as to focus on guiding the meeting in a direction that encourages people to clarify anything unclear and to assign action items and deadlines for any promised points. It can help to have some meeting ground rules agreed before.
3. Immediately after the meeting - before you forget the details - write up the notes and share them. Don't make that document (or the meeting) longer than one you would want to receive yourself in an email.
posted by rongorongo at 4:16 AM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Whenewver possible, I have a junior staffer join meetings specifically to serve as the central note-taker. I still take my partial, memory-jogging notes, but after the meting I integrate them into the junior staffer's notes. It helps me, it helps get other staffers up to pace on project details, and there's no specific technology need.
We often share our meeting minutes with the other party to review and return to us with their edits. For some government meetings, this is a requirement to ensure that no one leaves with misunderstood decisions, agreements, disagreements, next steps, etc. These high-fidelity notes are really helpful records and it spreads out the task of notetaking across meeting participants (to a degree—there's still a "notetaker" role and a "reviewer" role that has to be agreed on in advance).
I'm often in scenarios that explicitly forbid audio or video recording. Even if I could, though, who has time to rewatch/relisten to all that? It seems like it's doubling the investment needed to extract information.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:49 AM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
We often share our meeting minutes with the other party to review and return to us with their edits. For some government meetings, this is a requirement to ensure that no one leaves with misunderstood decisions, agreements, disagreements, next steps, etc. These high-fidelity notes are really helpful records and it spreads out the task of notetaking across meeting participants (to a degree—there's still a "notetaker" role and a "reviewer" role that has to be agreed on in advance).
I'm often in scenarios that explicitly forbid audio or video recording. Even if I could, though, who has time to rewatch/relisten to all that? It seems like it's doubling the investment needed to extract information.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:49 AM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's an official skill at my workplace - for divisional and above meetings, you get to take a course and there are templates, and it is a junior staffer's responsibility to take quick notes on top of the agenda, then review the auto-transcript and turn it into a meetings notes that's circulated and agreed on before being accepted. You've got way less in training and tools to reach the same level so don't be frustrated! You're doing something hard and aiming high.
Balance the effort involved to the value. We use OneNote and a table template (agenda items make one column, notes another, outcome another) and one person types during the meeting, interrupting for clarifications when needed, and afterwards we all check over the notes. That effort's only for biggish team meetings. Smaller ones, we type notes into Teams chat as we go, or someone types them up into an email/OneNote on their laptop during the meeting. Afterwards whoever organised the meeting files the notes.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:55 AM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Balance the effort involved to the value. We use OneNote and a table template (agenda items make one column, notes another, outcome another) and one person types during the meeting, interrupting for clarifications when needed, and afterwards we all check over the notes. That effort's only for biggish team meetings. Smaller ones, we type notes into Teams chat as we go, or someone types them up into an email/OneNote on their laptop during the meeting. Afterwards whoever organised the meeting files the notes.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:55 AM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Definitely typing! I am a much faster typist than I am at handwriting, and my notes are much clearer when I type.
posted by hepta at 5:20 AM on February 8, 2023
posted by hepta at 5:20 AM on February 8, 2023
It is extremely hard to take notes and participate fully. If I am responsible for actual minutes-like notes, then I make sure I have no other role in the meeting. If I just need good notes, then I take all the time I need to write them down in real time, including asking people to pause for a minute or repeat themselves. If I’m in charge of an agenda, sometimes instead of notes I’ll spend time at the end of the meeting making sure we all have any agreements and next steps memorialized.
posted by haptic_avenger at 6:17 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by haptic_avenger at 6:17 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
For the last decade or so, most meetings I'm in have a Google doc of notes for the meeting which is shared in the meeting invite. Everyone has laptops and can contribute to the doc in real time. The agenda will often be filled in on the doc before the meeting starts.
If people are in a conference room, someone projects the notes onto a big screen.
One person will be primary for taking notes. Often that is the person running the meeting but it can be delegated to someone else, especially for meetings with many attendees. Occasionally the meeting will pause while the note taker writes a short paragraph.
Since everyone can edit the doc, folks will add/correct info that the note taker misses. Often people will go find links to other docs or things being discussed and add them into the doc so the presenter doesn't have to, which would derail the meeting.
I work in high tech fwiw.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 7:14 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
If people are in a conference room, someone projects the notes onto a big screen.
One person will be primary for taking notes. Often that is the person running the meeting but it can be delegated to someone else, especially for meetings with many attendees. Occasionally the meeting will pause while the note taker writes a short paragraph.
Since everyone can edit the doc, folks will add/correct info that the note taker misses. Often people will go find links to other docs or things being discussed and add them into the doc so the presenter doesn't have to, which would derail the meeting.
I work in high tech fwiw.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 7:14 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Will just note that I have to do interviews for work and then get them quickly transcribed using Sonix, which is not free but is super useful if you need to know what happened but also need to pay attention to the actual comments and decisions.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:32 AM on February 8, 2023
posted by Bella Donna at 7:32 AM on February 8, 2023
I don't think anyone can take great notes and actively participate unless people make accommodations for it.
Who are the notes most important to? That's who I like to take notes. In strategic meetings, that's often me. In meetings about implementation, less so. They can make sure that their notes reflect their understanding and we can take the time to pause conversation to make sure they get it down right. Your culture may not support this, but it's been really good for the teams I use this with.
posted by advicepig at 7:42 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Who are the notes most important to? That's who I like to take notes. In strategic meetings, that's often me. In meetings about implementation, less so. They can make sure that their notes reflect their understanding and we can take the time to pause conversation to make sure they get it down right. Your culture may not support this, but it's been really good for the teams I use this with.
posted by advicepig at 7:42 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I used to make the mistake of thinking minutes/notes needed to capture (as a summary) everyone's opinion - like "rep. X said he thought the new policy would make traffic worse. Rep Y said studies have shown otherwise..." Nowadays my minutes are more like "decision: implement plan X, with added traffic monitoring in the first year." And if the conversation has moved on but I don't *know* what the upshot was, I call us back to fill out out - "hey folks, before we move on I wanted to check, did we decide to do anything regarding the traffic issue?"
posted by Lady Li at 8:34 AM on February 8, 2023
posted by Lady Li at 8:34 AM on February 8, 2023
Typing is faster than handwriting notes. Also, if you can summarise the discussion verbally (so, we've agreed that....) then that helps a lot with note-taking. If it's for your own purposes, just getting people to confirm the action points as part of the discussion is very helpful.
If they really need to be detailed, the answer is that someone else is a dedicated note taker (although, they often need to be trained up on what matters) or you record the meeting. MS Teams will auto-transcribe a meeting and I've found that pretty good unless one of the participants is from eg Northern Ireland.
posted by plonkee at 8:47 AM on February 8, 2023
If they really need to be detailed, the answer is that someone else is a dedicated note taker (although, they often need to be trained up on what matters) or you record the meeting. MS Teams will auto-transcribe a meeting and I've found that pretty good unless one of the participants is from eg Northern Ireland.
posted by plonkee at 8:47 AM on February 8, 2023
Best answer: I get paid to do this, and there's a reason so many groups are willing to pay for minute taking. As others are saying, it's very hard to both participate and take notes. It's not a basic skill you somehow failed to pick up; it's something no one can do very well.
Is part of the problem that conversations ramble and don't come to a clear conclusion, so it's hard to identify when you're at an important part where you should be writing something down? It's annoyingly common for people to discuss a topic for a while, then drift on to something else without anyone ever making a summing-up comment like, "It's decided then; we'll do X" or "It seems like most of us agree X is the best approach" or "There's no clear consensus on this, so we'll have to discuss it further at another meeting." Do you feel like you can gently push for those summing-up statements? Can you say, "Wait, before we move on, can we clarify what the decision is?" or "Are we leaving this unresolved for now and coming back to it next time?" If you can do that, you won't just be helping yourself take better notes; you'll be helping everyone else who is equally uncertain about whether anything was decided but is too afraid of looking stupid or seeming bossy or prolonging the meeting to actually say anything.
For the one-on-one meetings, it should be more obvious to you when something important is being said. I wonder if you just need to build time for note taking into the meeting. Can you occasionally ask to pause for a couple of minutes so you can take notes? That also gives the other person time to think over what was said and identify anything they may still have questions about.
And maybe this is too obvious, but use abbreviations when possible. "Opp" or "app" instead of "opportunity" or "application," initials instead of names, etc.
posted by Redstart at 10:05 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
Is part of the problem that conversations ramble and don't come to a clear conclusion, so it's hard to identify when you're at an important part where you should be writing something down? It's annoyingly common for people to discuss a topic for a while, then drift on to something else without anyone ever making a summing-up comment like, "It's decided then; we'll do X" or "It seems like most of us agree X is the best approach" or "There's no clear consensus on this, so we'll have to discuss it further at another meeting." Do you feel like you can gently push for those summing-up statements? Can you say, "Wait, before we move on, can we clarify what the decision is?" or "Are we leaving this unresolved for now and coming back to it next time?" If you can do that, you won't just be helping yourself take better notes; you'll be helping everyone else who is equally uncertain about whether anything was decided but is too afraid of looking stupid or seeming bossy or prolonging the meeting to actually say anything.
For the one-on-one meetings, it should be more obvious to you when something important is being said. I wonder if you just need to build time for note taking into the meeting. Can you occasionally ask to pause for a couple of minutes so you can take notes? That also gives the other person time to think over what was said and identify anything they may still have questions about.
And maybe this is too obvious, but use abbreviations when possible. "Opp" or "app" instead of "opportunity" or "application," initials instead of names, etc.
posted by Redstart at 10:05 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
You are listening for and making note of:
Topics discussed
Decisions made
problems discovered
Side discussions people need to go have and report back to the team on
Actions
If you have a hard time listening for that, you may need more clarity on the big picture / issues at hand.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:59 AM on February 8, 2023
Topics discussed
Decisions made
problems discovered
Side discussions people need to go have and report back to the team on
Actions
If you have a hard time listening for that, you may need more clarity on the big picture / issues at hand.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:59 AM on February 8, 2023
Best answer: Nthing what everyone else is saying about typing vs. handwriting. Taking notes & producing official minutes is more than 50% of my job and this is how I do it:
* I use the agenda as a template - I set the template up ahead of time with spaces for who is present at the meeting, who made a motion, who seconded, etc.
* I take my laptop to the meeting.
* I type like a maniac through the entire meeting. I pretty much try to capture everything. The meetings are also recorded.
* I then go back through my rough draft notes and edit them down, down, down. I should really do this like the next day but I usually wait until the deadline is approaching instead; don't be like me.
* I highlight areas that are confusing and as the last step, go through the meeting recording - a transcription is super helpful for this so you can find your place; Zoom does it if you record to the cloud - to clarify those areas.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:18 PM on February 8, 2023
* I use the agenda as a template - I set the template up ahead of time with spaces for who is present at the meeting, who made a motion, who seconded, etc.
* I take my laptop to the meeting.
* I type like a maniac through the entire meeting. I pretty much try to capture everything. The meetings are also recorded.
* I then go back through my rough draft notes and edit them down, down, down. I should really do this like the next day but I usually wait until the deadline is approaching instead; don't be like me.
* I highlight areas that are confusing and as the last step, go through the meeting recording - a transcription is super helpful for this so you can find your place; Zoom does it if you record to the cloud - to clarify those areas.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:18 PM on February 8, 2023
I use OneNote on my Surface Pro - handwriting my notes and simultaneously recording audio. An invaluable aspect of OneNote is that the notes and recorded audio are synchronised. When reviewing later, if I am unsure of what my note is trying to convey I can press play and whatever was being said at the time I made the note will be played back.
posted by Tawita at 3:29 PM on February 8, 2023
posted by Tawita at 3:29 PM on February 8, 2023
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There are apps that will take your handwritten electronic notes and turn them into typed text for you. But my problem isn't reading my handwriting, it's speed.
If it is critical that I get specific facts and details in full I have been known to ask people for a moment to allow me to take them down. Nobody has ever minded.
If I just need to make sure to capture decisions and actions I am very short and to the point.
If I need to be somewhere in between 'just actions/decisions' and 'detailed notes on all aspects of the discussion' I try to make a point of taking down the actions/decisions as the meeting progresses. Then I spend a few minutes immediately after the meeting layering in the pertinent details while the meeting is still fresh in my mind. Again that works a lot better if your notes are already typed.
I use Onenote because I can open that from the calendar invitation, I can share the notebook with other participants for them to layer in details as well if that makes sense. And it automatically includes participants/time/agenda or messages included in the invitation......so a head start on things included in minutes.
I can also paste any attached agenda into one note to start me off, paste screenshots of presented material if that's relevant, or specific details/facts people sometimes put in a Teams chat during a meeting to help you make sure you have the correct 'critical facts' - whatever the critical fact may be that you need to be able to refer back to, the thing you may have to ask people to repeat or pause so you can get it down correctly.
posted by koahiatamadl at 3:04 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]