How to take meeting notes

Me during a meeting: I don't need to write this down, I'll remember it.

Me after meeting: Arg! I wish I had written that down!

Me during meeting: I'm going to write this down even if it doesn't seem important.

Me after meeting: Why do I have notes on only meaningless stuff!?!

Clearly I have some work to do, but the advice to listen and then write notes after is good, but I would suggest doing so towards the end with everyone involved. Something like "hey let's all review and make tasks lists "

I forgot things other people said and regretted not being able to recall. Either you have great memory or even worst so that you don't even recall that something was said.

The easiest example are requirements gatherings. Tons of things are said and they become blurry after a while.

It's crazy to think at how wildly different memory works.

I once went on a 5 day business trip and about 2 days after the trip it was kind of effortless to recall pretty much all of the details of everything without taking notes. Enough to write a 7,000 word blog post and string together a story from beginning to end. I purposely left out many details for the sake of not wanting the post to be overly long.

I also find it pretty easy to re-trace my day and pick out details, like the orientation of how things were on a table at lunch, or what video game a kid was playing on the train who I happened to be sitting next to from 2 years ago without really trying to recall it.

But I'm 100% helpless when it comes to memorizing scripts. I've recorded over 500 technical tutorial videos and most of them were scripted out for a course where I read those words (no webcam so it didn't look weird), but about 100 of them are YouTube videos with a webcam where I just winged it based on prior knowledge with no script or bullets.

But now I have a talk coming up next week where I'm giving a 45 minute presentation on something technical that's basically a 45 minute live demo and I can't script it out and it's going to be live streamed. I legit can't even write 15 seconds of words and recall them exactly a minute later. I wish I could find a bullet proof way to do this. I've tried so many things over the years unsuccessfully. Bullets help, but it's super easy to forget critical details with just a few bullets.

I hate to draw conclusions but I think I'm very far on the spectrum of being a visual learner that trying to memorize words alone could be impossible for me.

How do you memorize lots of words in a specific order when you suck at memorizing words?

I have to meet with new groups of people on a regular basis and am likewise horrible with names. My notes in meetings consist of first names written down as a map of where people were sitting. If I miss a name, I leave an empty spot. It has helped me with remembering names. I often never refer to it again.

I think there is a big difference between a meeting with one other person - as the author describes - and a corporate meeting of 3 project managers, 2 business analysts, an enterprise architect and 3 engineers who didn't think to reject the meeting they absolutely didn't need to be at.

Meeting 1:1 you range all over, I often have meetings with people that go from work, to our kids, to the weekend, to work, back to the kids and then to the pub. All of it is valuable, but not all of it is valuable for work. But a year later when I remember it was that person's eldest's birthday I've made a solid connection.

Equally important is that not every brain works the same way, I'd be completely screwed trying to use Vasili's method as I have aphantasia. But that doesn't mean others wouldn't find it useful.