How to take meeting notes
barehands.substack.com
How to take meeting notes
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Re: How to take meeting notes
#2Never once in my life I thought "I wish I had taken notes when I met person X." I naturally remember something worth remembering to me, and never once I found out that there was something important that was said and I was worse off for not having written it down. Is it just me?
Re: How to take meeting notes
#3The premise here is that meetings are chock-full of valuable and dense information. This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time.
There are also various linguistic theories that argue that actual information density (in spoken/written language) is significantly less than 95%. So the corollary here is that remembering 95% of a meeting is a waste of cognitive capacity. The better strategy would be to bullet-point and solely remember the most salient and important information. The author's efforts seem like an interesting "memory game," but there are better methods[1] for learning how to remember stuff, if, for whatever reason, that's your end goal.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#4Never once in my life I thought "I wish I had taken notes when I met person X." I naturally remember something worth remembering to me, and never once I found out that there was something important that was said and I was worse off for not having written it down. Is it just me?
Memory capability and behavior is variable. I can remember and keep in mind vast swaths of code, but I am capable of forgetting someone’s name in seconds.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#5Never once in my life I thought "I wish I had taken notes when I met person X." I naturally remember something worth remembering to me, and never once I found out that there was something important that was said and I was worse off for not having written it down. Is it just me?
Probably not in a business setting. But often I wish I'd taken better notes during doctor visits.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#6The premise here is that meetings are chock-full of valuable and dense information. This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. There are also various linguistic theories that argue that actual information density (in spoken/written language) is significantly less than 95%. So the corollary here is that remembering 95% of a meeting is a waste of cognitive capacity. The better strategy would be to b…
I have similar doubts, but only thinking of the kind of work meetings I regularly have.
I think something like a non-technical interview "meeting" has a much higher information density.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#7A long time ago, my boss at the time taught me a valuable lesson: every meeting needs an official record(/log/minutes/whatever) documenting all noteworthy decisions (D), tasks (T, with deadline and responsible person), and information communicated (I), with that record being sent to all participants by end-of-day.
The reasoning being simple:
If anything of consequence was discussed in the meeting, then the official record is a valuable documentation (and the basis for the next meeting).
If nothing of consequence was discussed in the meeting, then the meeting was a waste of time and should never have taken place in the first place. Somebody wasn't prepared for the meeting they scheduled.
Like a good commit message, an official record as described above is cheap (doesn't take more than 2-3 minutes to write) and often delivers a fantastic ROI.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#8The premise here is that meetings are chock-full of valuable and dense information. This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. There are also various linguistic theories that argue that actual information density (in spoken/written language) is significantly less than 95%. So the corollary here is that remembering 95% of a meeting is a waste of cognitive capacity. The better strategy would be to b…
I wholeheartedly agree that most meetings are a waste of time.
In fact, a decade ago I made a very simple game for Windows Phone as it was launching called Meetingz, where you clicked on buzz words that you heard during a meeting to avoid going insane (while looking productive). After the meeting, it tabulated your BS index and compared the results to previous meetings.
During its short lifetime, the app had over 11,000 downloads: http://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/killercodingninjamon...
Re: How to take meeting notes
#9> Drawing helps me bring back many other emotion-related things because I begin remembering emotions I’ve implicitly stored (i.e., when the person was angry, happy, loud, etc.).
I love the sketches. I learned to draw for that reason, I add sketches to my notes. It also helps me to relax during a meeting and read the mood of the room (if I sketch facial expressions).
And, quite often, to share the sketches afterwards creates an opportunity for casual conversation and creating rapport.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#10The premise here is that meetings are chock-full of valuable and dense information. This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. There are also various linguistic theories that argue that actual information density (in spoken/written language) is significantly less than 95%. So the corollary here is that remembering 95% of a meeting is a waste of cognitive capacity. The better strategy would be to b…
I wholeheartedly agree that most meetings are a waste of time. In fact, a decade ago I made a very simple game for Windows Phone as it was launching called Meetingz, where you clicked on buzz words that you heard during a meeting to avoid going insane (while looking productive). After the meeting, it tabulated your BS index and compared the results to previous meetings. During its short lifetime, the app had over 11,…
Clicking on a phone looks productive? I'm surprised, I thought it would make you look distracted and inattentive.