31. How to Take Notes at Meetings (So You Work Smarter)
Episode 31
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, we talk all about how to take notes at meetings. If you’re a working professional, this episode is especially for you, but if you’re a student, you can use these tips at your academic meetings like after-school clubs.
Meetings are hard enough to sit through. Taking notes during meetings shouldn’t add to your stress.
By the end of this episode, you’ll know:
✅ When to take notes at meetings and when not to
✅ What kind of information to take notes on and what NOT to take notes on
✅ The strategy for how to figure out what to write down
✅ How to format your notes so they’re useful when you need them
So get out your pens so you can take some notes on taking notes ;)
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned:
→ Episode 05: Secrets of a Good Task Management System
→ Episode 10: Tips for Better Task Management and Focus (Q&A)
→ Episode 28: 6 Tips for Organizing Papers
→ Episode 29: How to Take Useful Notes from Books
✏️ FREE DOWNLOADS:
→ Daily Timeblock Planner (pdf)
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)
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How to take notes at meetings
Hello there. And welcome to episode 31 of the learn and works smarter podcast. Today's episode is all about how to take notes in meetings.
So to be fully transparent, I am recording it with working professionals in mind. But hear me out. Don't go yet if you're not a working professional, if you're a student, because I still invite you to listen all the way through, because many of the tips that I share here today can be helpful in the types of meetings that you might find yourself in like afterschool clubs, or even if you have a part-time job.
Right. So, Keep in mind that as I share some tips today, that my goal is always, always to help anyone who's listening to be inspired, to try something new if what you're currently doing, isn't working.
And my goal is to share best practices that I collect and distill from not only my personal and professional experience, but from working with thousands of clients.
I coach students and working professionals in my private practice and I can't even tell you how many times that I have learned new strategies or perspectives from my clients, which I then go on to share with others. So that is my goal to inspire you and to encourage you to think about your skills and systems in new ways, ways that may be more efficient or more practical than what you're doing now. So take what's helpful. Leave the rest. And let's get into it.
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📍 📍 All right.
So as you know, because you clicked on this episode today, we're talking about taking notes during meetings. So in episode 29, I shared some strategies for how to take notes from books. The title of that episode is how to take useful notes from books. And I make such a stink in that episode about using the word useful.
And as you know, by now I leave all the links to everything I mentioned in the show notes.
If you're listening to this in a podcast app or in the description box if you're listening to this on the learn and work smarter YouTube channel. But in that episode, episode 29, I talk about the most important mindset to have when taking notes from books, okay, which is that in order for your notes to be useful, you have to determine a purpose of your notes ahead of time.
Now in the context of taking notes during meetings, that is singularly the most important mindset to have as well.
There is no reason for you to take notes during a meeting, if you have no intention of using those notes or coming back to them at any point in the future? I mean, I suppose if you're like fresh out of college and you don't really know what you're doing and you see everyone else at your first meeting, you know, taking out. You're taking notes.
You might take out your laptop or your notebook, just so people don't think that you're a silly goose. We're not taking notes. But if that's really your situation, then this advice is especially for you.
You have to determine the reason why you are taking notes in the first place.
What are you going to come back to your notes for him? Once you determine this, then you can figure out a system for, you know, what kind of notes to take, what to write down, how to format them and all the other tidbits that we are going to talk about today.
So, let me give you an example or not example so much, but let me break this down a little bit more. For most meetings. In a professional setting, there are two reasons why you would take notes. Now, yes, this can change depending on your scenario, but I would say that in like 90% of the time, you have two reasons to take notes during meetings. Number one to collect information that you intend to reference in the future. And number two to capture action items that you will be responsible for at some point after the meeting.
So if we just, you know, go ahead and assume that in most cases, that's the purpose of your notes, then that tells us what we should be taking notes on: information that we'll need to reference in the future and to do list items or tasks that we need to complete at some point in the future.
Anything in the meeting that falls outside of those two categories, I argue does not need to be captured anywhere in your notes.
So right there establishing that simple framework from the beginning helps you have a little bit more laser focus as you're sitting there at a meeting, wondering what the heck to write down.
Right? So. Let's start with number one, the first purpose, which is to capture information you're going to need to reference at some point in the future.
Okay. This could be things like important dates that are being shared at the meeting, like maybe a product launch or a company, um, convention or initiative or something or anything with a date attached to it.
This could be changes to company policies, um, or the company handbook, even trivial things like, Hey, we're starting a new system of like cleaning out the break room refrigerator every two weeks instead of, you know, every week.
Okay. So something small like that. Maybe your manager or whoever's running the meeting is asking everyone to format how internal emails are sent or maybe new guidelines around creating company memos, or I don't know, whatever, whatever it may be. Essentially, this is all information that you need to know and will likely need to reference at some point, because you might forget it.
Right. Maybe. Maybe not, maybe that would be your call, but personally I would write this stuff down because we never remember what we tell ourselves we're going to remember.
Okay. So this goes in your notes and I would use bullet points, but I'm going to talk about formatting a little bit later in this episode.
So sit tight, 'cause before we talk about format, format ting, I want to talk about the second reason that we take notes at meetings, which is to capture action items.
You know how often we are sitting in a meeting being told this, being told that being talked at, you know, listening to information come at us and then boom, like an action item appears -either one is assigned to you or you realize, oh, Hey, like I have to remember to do that.
Like something occurs to you internally. Obviously an action item is something that you are ultimately responsible for. These are very important to take notes on because when you leave the meeting, this is something that you have to handle. So going back to our silly little example of the break room refrigerator.
Okay. Let's say that the new policy is that they're going to remove everything that's not labeled in the fridge, um, with a name on it every Friday instead of every other Friday. Okay. Or whatever.
This is reference information and you would write it down so that you don't forget. But let's say that you keep a salad dressing in the office fridge and you don't have a label on it. Well, then now you have an action item: label my salad dressing, right?
That is something that you need to do. And it's not like assigned to you at the meeting, but it occurs to you as you're listening to reference information, right. This would go in your notes as an action item and you would format it that way again, we are going to talk about formatting strategies in just a moment, but I want to continue with the topic we're on using another example. Alright, let's say that during a meeting about a new product launch you are capturing information, I don't know about the date of the launch.
Maybe things you need to know about, you know, the company's digital storage system, as it relates to this launch and you know where to find different files and different folders or whatever. That is all reference information and it's very good. And you write it all down. Again, we'll talk about formatting in a second.
But let's say that in that conversation, you are asked to do something related to this launch.
I don't know, maybe you have been assigned to be the person in charge. Of creating all the SOP, the standard operating procedures for this thing, whatever okay, I'm like making these examples up as we go. But you know what I'm talking about?
Well, now this is a task that you are responsible for and you don't want to just get lost in your notes that truthfully will likely contain mostly reference information.
So you would need a way to indicate in your note somehow that this is a task. All right.
And that now takes us to formatting, which is one thing that I get asked a ton of questions about.
In episode 29, when I was talking about taking notes from books, I give the same advice, which is to format your notes in a way that your future self would find useful.
Does future, you want to search a Google doc or a word doc or something digital to find your notes. Or does future you will just want to flip through a notebook and find what you wrote down that way?
If you like the idea of taking notes digitally, like typing them cause it's faster, but then the future you never goes back into a digital files and documents to find what you wrote, then don't take digital notes. Take slower notes and make the sacrifice and so that the sacrifice isn't for the future you who's actually using the notes.
Does that make sense?
In terms of formatting. In most cases for meeting notes, I suggest either simple outline bullet notes or two column notes where the left side is one third of the page. And the other column is two thirds of the page. So not split equally down the middle. I hope that makes sense visually.
Okay. If you are going to go with simple outline and bullet point notes, then just simply write a heading as it pertains to what you're talking about at the meeting. And then write your key points underneath that. Every time in, in bullet points. Every time the topic changes. You create a new heading.
If you get it wrong. Oh, well, your headings don't have to be perfect. Right?
The bullet points below each heading would contain both reference information and action item information as bullet points underneath that main heading.
But here's the thing you need to make that action item stand out. Any action item that you take notes on, it needs to stand out.
So if you're going to do it this way, you'll need to have a way to indicate that what you wrote down was a task. And I think the simplest way to do this.. Wait for it. Is to use a star, like just draw a star in your notes. So you've got a heading at the top. You know, and, and, you know, that's in your notes that says like new product launch and underneath that you're taking bullet point notes about everything you need to know about that launch that you think you're going to have to come back to.
And then let's say something is given to you or something occurs to you that you need to act on, well, then you would add that as a bullet point as well. Okay, but then you'll just add a simple little star next to that bullet point, indicating that it's something you need to do.
And then when you go back to your notes after the meeting, when I talk about that in a second, you can just skim your notes for the stars.
Okay, I want you to pay attention here right now.
If you have been multitasking or zoning out, I do want you to refocus and listen to this part. Our action items do not stay in our meeting notes. We pull those action items from our notes and put them in our task management system. In episode five, I share strategies to create a simple task management system if you don't already have one.
Episode 10, the February Q and A, is also a good one to listen to because I talk about task management in that episode as well. That's episode 10.
If you don't currently have a system to track tasks you're going to need one. You need some kind of, you know, separate location where you write down your tasks from the meeting and, you know, in general, So that you remember to do them and can make a clear plan for getting them done.
You would do this after the meeting. Ideally, right after the meeting, but if not, at least later that day.
This is called processing our notes. And it is, it is the secret second half of note-taking that nobody talks about.
Stay with me here for a second. Let me talk for a minute about two-column notes, because I suggested that that is another way to take notes during meetings, too, if you want to try that method.
The way this would work is you would still use an outline format, but you would write almost everything, you know, all your notes in that larger right-hand column. So your headings and your bullet points beneath your headings.
But here is where it is different. Every time you come across an action item or an action item occurs to you or it's assigned or whatever it goes in that smaller left-hand column.
All of the information in the right-hand column is. His reference material and all the information in the left-hand column are the action items related to whatever it is in the right side. Does that make sense?
This has the same effect as using a star in the other method that I just talked about. Because at the end of the meeting, you can, you know, or, you know, after the meeting, or sometime later that day, you can just sort of skim your notes. And quickly extract the action items from that left-hand column and put them in your task management system. A common mistake that I see many of my adult clients make when they take meeting notes is they never do anything with their notes afterward, right?
And then the tasks get lost. And as you know, Okay. Sometimes we don't actually need to take notes at meetings and that is fine. Remember what I said at the top of this episode, which is that the whole reason we take notes at meetings is so that we can use the information in the future.
So assuming you're going to use that information in the future, you have to do something with the notes that you took.
You have to process them.
So for many people, It's as simple as just extracting the action items and putting them in a task management system and then just leaving all the reference information just right there in your notes. Not doing anything with it, keeping it in the notes. That's fine. You don't need to pull the reference information from your notes and put it anywhere else if you don't want to.
All right. But if you do that, My question to you is what are you going to do with your notes? Where are you going to store them? In a pile of papers on your desk? I don't think so. Again, I'm assuming you're going to need this information in this, in the future. So you're going to need a place to keep these notes so that you know where to go to find them. In episode 28. I share strategies for organizing papers.
And one idea I had, this is really simple. So if it is like, too simple for you, you don't have to do it. But what about just having a simple folder where you keep all your meeting notes- if you're taking notes regularly, maybe you are in like a dedicated notebook, right? And you just store all your meeting notes in that notebook where you take them.
And then your future and you would know to go into that notebook or that folder and everything you ever took notes on during a meeting is where it's supposed to be. But again, your action items would go in a task management system. All right.
What I am trying to do here is share probably the simplest way to take notes during meetings, because I really am of the philosophy that the simplest strategies are the best, but if you are currently taking notes during meetings, in a way that's working for you and you love it. And it's totally different from what I'm talking about here, then keep doing what you're doing. But you have to ask yourself, honestly, is it really working for you? Is it working for the future you?
Are your notes serving you in the way that they should, when you need that information? If the answer is no. Or if the answer is well, kind of. Then try out some of those strategies that I talked about today. You know what I've been trying to get in the habit of doing a recap at the end of my episodes.
So I am going to do that now.
I hope you find that helpful. I know that when I listened to podcasts, I like when the host does that. Right. So I'm trying to be better about it too. So recap. The first thing to think about is to determine why you're taking notes in the first place. For like 98% of people the reason we take notes at meetings, Is to capture reference information, um, or like material that you're going to come back to again, and to capture action items that are assigned to you or that occur to you during a meeting. When you determine the reason you are taking notes, that's what you hone in on.
And that's what you focus on and you leave the rest out.
Next formatting. We formatted our notes in a way that the future you would appreciate, you can type them. You can handwrite them on an iPad using an apple pencil. A notebook, whatever you want. There's so many different ways. But I want you to ask yourself, how do I like to go back into my notes when I need them? Okay.
That's a really important question. If that's part of self-assessing.
In terms of formatting, I suggest a simple outline bullet point method or a two column notes method. If you're doing the outline bullet point method, then every time you're assigned to task or task or one occurs to you put a star next to it, or your own symbol, whatever. If you're doing the two-column note method put your outline and bullet points and reference information in the right hand column and then your tasks, or to-do list action items in the smaller left-hand column.
And then finally process your notes sometime later that day, which for most of us simply means extracting the tasks and the action items and putting them in our task management system and then storing the notes away in a place where our future self will know to look for them.
Okay. That's the recap. And that brings us to the end. I hope you found this episode helpful.
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