How to Write Better Meeting Notes

One of the skills that is not taught in most industries is how to write meeting notes, which is a shame given the amount of time we collectively spend in meetings.

Let’s take a look at how to write better meeting notes by adopting a structure and syntax.

Use the topics as your first level of bullets.

Writing better meeting notes starts before the meeting, which is why having an agenda or topics for the discussion in advance is so important. Even if you get these in the first few minutes, it drives the overall structure of the notes.

Organize notes as second and third level bullets under the relevant topic.

As the meeting progresses through a topic, keep the notes indented as sub-points within that topic. Meetings are not always linear, so if a topic is discussed at the start and revisited later, head back to that section to keep things organized.

Use a shorthand to visually flag key points.

Back in the days of spiral notebooks and trapper keepers, highlighters or different color pens were helpful for this sort of thing. However, this is harder to accomplish on the fly, so adopt a shorthand technique.

Here are the ones that I use

• QQ flags a (quick) question to revisit if it doesn't make sense to ask during conversation flow

• IDEA indicates a potential area to explore

• DESIGN to note a way that a problem could be solved

• RISK to capture something that could impact the project

• VALUE to reference the quantitative or qualitative impact that a project has

• TODO to capture an action item inline to collate later into a different section (see below)

Define action items with a person doing something with an optional date.

Ensure that the owner and what they are supposed to do is clear, and optionally the date they committed to doing it.

Example: Roger to propose three options and recommendation on data enrichment providers by Thursday EOD.

Also, don't wait until the end to define who is doing what and by when. Have a section started for all action items and jump to that as takeaways are defined during the meeting, or use the TODO shorthand above to capture inline and reorganize it at the end.

Use links to point to relevant docs or assets discussed during the meeting.

Instead of transcribing something that is documented or represented elsewhere, include a link to that document, process flow, screen within an app, etc.

TLDR: Use bullets for topics and organize notes as sub-bullets, adopt a shorthand to flag key points, and define action items clearly.