How to take meeting notes
The instinct during a meeting is to transcribe, and transcription is the least useful thing you can do with your attention. You need enough to act on afterwards, and that is a much smaller document.
What matters here
- Write the purpose of the meeting in one line
- Capture decisions as numbered points
- Give every action an owner and a date
- Skip the discussion unless it explains a decision
- Move actions into the task list before you close the note
The first two minutes
Open the note before the meeting starts and write the purpose. If nobody can state it, that is worth knowing early. Two lines of context make the note usable by someone who was not there.
During the meeting
Listen for verbs: we will, I will, we decided. Those sentences become the note. Anything else is optional, and skipping it is why the note stays readable.
The five minutes after
Turn each action into a task with an owner and a date, then share the note with the people who were there. A note shared within the hour gets read; the same note the next morning usually does not.
Frequently asked questions
Keep reading
- How to schedule recurring choresChores need a day of the week and an owner, not a specific time. Anything tighter gets abandoned after the first missed week.
- How to plan a launchA launch plan is a dated run of dependent work with a decision point before the date. Most launches fail on the dependencies, not the announcement.
- What is a task?A task is a single unit of work with a clear finish line, small enough that you can start it without planning first.
Turn talk into a plan
Capture a thought in plain language and let Prysm Note shape it into tasks and a timeline.
Disclaimer
This page is general information, not professional, legal, financial or medical advice. It describes common ways of working and how Prysm Note approaches them. Software changes over time, so details may differ from what you see in the product. Any product, company or brand names that appear are the property of their respective owners and are used only for identification. We do not claim any endorsement or affiliation. Where we compare approaches, we aim to describe each one honestly, including where a different approach may suit you better. Try the tools that matter to you and judge for yourself.