How to take meeting notes • Hacker News Board

Re: How to take meeting notes

#21

Post by asciimov » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

Note taking is a skill we should be teaching in school.

This technique is great for subjects which you have existing knowledge.

Once you're overloaded with information, recalling those specifics is quite hard without good notes that were taken during the meeting.

For example, if you're in a meeting discussing colors for a design you write down the chosen colors. Remembering the path you took to the meeting room nor the blue shirt the client wore will help you recall what shade of chartreuse they wanted.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#22

Post by dragontamer » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #7

A 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 r…

Roberts Rules indicates that the secretary (the one who records the meeting) is one of the most important roles.

To the point: according to Roberts Rules, the #1 most important item in all meetings is finalizing the meeting notes from the previous meeting (ie: Everyone agrees that the stated meeting notes are correct).

Every meeting, according to Roberts Rules, starts with an understanding that everyone at the new meeting agrees upon the summary of the previous meeting. If you cannot agree to this, then the current meeting cannot progress (because the current meeting is almost inevitably "based upon" the previous meeting). Fixing the errors in documentation is incredibly important.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#23

Post by cm2187 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

Another trick is to follow up a meeting with the minutes of what was said. It is common in meetings for people to disagree and for no clear decision to come out (particularly on a noisy conference call with 20 participants - I am shocked how poor is the audio quality in 2020, doesn't sound like a hard problem to solve). But whoever controls the minutes controls the narrative and the official outcome of the meeting.

To the point where for contentious meetings you can have conflicts on who will take care of the minutes.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#24

Post by VikingCoder » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

I can remember 95% of a 2h meeting, too.

Just not any of the Actions Items assigned to me, or the names of any of the participants.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#25

Post by cmehdy » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #11

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…

Actionable items list + ownership. Even if it is simply to have one person (or very small team) spearhead the item, it gives accountability and makes it clear to everyone that the issue isn't just up in the air.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#26

Post by corobo » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

Is substack the new medium? I saw a link to it for the first time a couple weeks back (at least the first time I registered the name) and now it seems to be everywhere.

Yes I'm aware of the phenomenon that makes you notice things more after you notice them once. Not that.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#27

Post by nocman » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

zwayhowder wrote: post #19

dvt wrote: post #3

The 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 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 th…

"All of it is valuable, but not all of it is valuable for work."

^ you could make the argument that almost all of it is valuable for work. The connections you make with other people, even on things that do not relate to work, can have a huge impact on your relationship in the workplace. Even the stuff that just seems like nonsense, joking around, crazy dicussions about things that don't really matter much, etc -- sharing those things can be part of building friendship and trust, and that can be of great value for work.

Of course, sometimes such things can have a negative effect, depending on the person you are meeting with. So you need to be aware of that.

Some people are particularly good at building relationships this way.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#28

Post by andi999 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #15

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 fin…

For the second and third paragraph: how do you validate that you really remember these things correctly and not just think you remembered them?

For the script remembering: you cant do it. That is basically a profession called acting which takes a few years of training (biggest problem if you try is to do the gestures before the phrasing out, so usually what you do looks and feels unatural).

Good advice I got was you make a few 'stars', aka minitopics and you branch out with on words what you want to say, you remember these topics and then you speak naturally. If it is a long talk and you must not miss anything then mayve the ancient greek method might be good. Take any place you know by hear (like your favorite greek temple, or your home) and go mentally systematically through it (like counterclock-wise) and place mentally on each physical object a topic. To recall during talk do the mental walk again.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#29

Post by ckastner » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #22

ckastner wrote: post #7

A 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 r…

Roberts Rules indicates that the secretary (the one who records the meeting) is one of the most important roles. To the point: according to Roberts Rules, the #1 most important item in all meetings is finalizing the meeting notes from the previous meeting (ie: Everyone agrees that the stated meeting notes are correct). Every meeting, according to Roberts Rules, starts with an understanding that everyone at the new me…

Which is exactly why you send the notes by end-of-day. People get the chance to object ASAP, and are otherwise bound to the record going forward.

Re: How to take meeting notes

#30

Post by dudus » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #26

Is substack the new medium? I saw a link to it for the first time a couple weeks back (at least the first time I registered the name) and now it seems to be everywhere. Yes I'm aware of the phenomenon that makes you notice things more after you notice them once. Not that.

Let's hope so. At least until they get greedy and start to hold content for ransom