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Sean Murphy's avatar

I think you make some unconscious assumptions that are worth revisiting. If you are collaborating with the others in the meeting, considering taking notes in a real-time shared edit document (E.g. Google Doc, Notion, Microsoft 365, etc.) then you can save five minutes at the end to review the notes and action items. This works for 1 on 1's, team meetings, customer meetings, sales calls, etc.

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Charlie Gilkey's avatar

I totally hear you, Sean! Great comment and thanks for the nudge to check my unconscious assumptions.

Saving five minutes at the end of a meeting to capture next actions, etc. in a collaborative doc is something I strongly recommend, too.

It pulls down some of the admin pile-up and “who said what?” to do so, at the same time that many of these quick collab tools aren’t great as a task management system, so there’s still some residue from the meeting.

Additionally, some folks find that when they split focus between collaborative note-taking and paying attention to people, they’re not doing well at either. YMMV, obviously, but it’s worth considering.

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Sean Murphy's avatar

I find handwritten note-taking is still easier, but typewritten notes can be divided by the attendees and is a skill that can be developed. John Smith of Accelerated taught me the value of shared note-taking in remote meetings; it offers reassurance to other participants that you are actually listening and not surfing the web or sending emails. I also think there may be an introvert/extrovert split: if I am typing and capturing my thoughts, I am not interrupting and not losing my thoughts (I use a separate file to capture unrelated notes). I think it's a question of getting your typing skill to the point where the mechanical overhead or muscle memory is on a par with handwriting, but I can see where it's 80% participation.

In portions of meetings where I need to be fully present, I take fewer notes (although, again, as an extrovert, taking notes reduces my interruptions, and I am better able to allow others to have their say).

Anytime you send you minutes after the conversation is over, there is friction involved in recovering the shared context (e.g., I did not say that, I did not agree to that, you said X, you committed to Y). I find it especially helpful to confirm my commitments in writing before the end of the meeting and to ask others to memorialize theirs so expectations and handoffs are clearer.

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