Meeting notes that lead to action: a simple system

You leave a meeting with a page of notes and a vague sense that things were agreed. A week later nobody remembers who was doing what, and the same topic comes up again. The problem usually isn’t the meeting itself. It’s what happens to the notes.

Organisational psychologist Steven Rogelberg, who has studied meetings for decades, argues that much of the time people spend in meetings is wasted, and that the fix lies in how meetings are designed and followed up rather than in having fewer of them (Rogelberg, 2019). Good notes are a large part of that follow-up.

What makes notes useful

Most notes try to record what was said. Useful notes record what was decided and what happens next. Four things matter far more than everything else:

1. Decisions: what was agreed, in one line each.
2. Actions: what needs doing, by whom, and by when.
3. Open questions: what’s still unresolved, and who will find out.
4. Context worth keeping: numbers, names and reasons you’ll need later.

Everything else, such as who said what and the back-and-forth discussion, is rarely needed again.

A simple template

Use the same four headings in every meeting:

• Decisions
• Actions (task · owner · date)
• Open questions
• Notes

During the meeting, fill in Actions and Decisions as they happen, not at the end. If an action has no owner or date, ask for one before moving on: “Who’s taking that, and by when?” It feels slightly awkward the first few times and saves hours later.

The five-minute follow-up

Right after the meeting, while it’s fresh:

1. Turn your actions into tasks in your planner, each with a date. An action that only lives in meeting notes is easy to forget.
2. Send a short recap to everyone: decisions, actions with owners, open questions. Three short lists, no essay.
3. Block time for your own actions. If you agreed to send a proposal by Thursday, put a block on Wednesday afternoon now.
4. File the notes where the work lives, next to the project they belong to, not in a separate notes app you never open.

When you can’t take notes

Some meetings are too fast or too important to write during. That’s where recording helps: you stay in the conversation and get the notes afterwards. Always tell people you’re recording and get their agreement first; in many places the law requires it, and it’s simply polite.

Common mistakes

• Writing everything. A transcript-style page is hard to use. Write decisions and actions; keep the rest short.
• Actions without owners. “We’ll look into it” means nobody will. Every action needs one name.
• Notes in the wrong place. Notes in a personal notebook nobody else sees, or in a chat thread that scrolls away, are as good as lost.
• No recap. If the people who were there never see the decisions in writing, they’ll each remember them differently.
• Following up too late. A recap sent three days later gets read by nobody. Send it within the hour.

Before the meeting, too

Notes are easier when the meeting has a clear purpose. Before each meeting, write one line: “By the end, we’ll have decided ___.” If you can’t fill the blank, the meeting may not need to happen, or it may need a different agenda.

A quick example

A 30-minute project check-in becomes:

• Decisions: launch moves to 12 November; the pricing page goes live first.
• Actions: Dana sends final copy (Tue) · Omar fixes the checkout bug (Wed) · you brief support (Thu).
• Open questions: do we need a press release? (Sarah to check by Friday)

Nine lines, and everyone knows what happens next.

Doing this in Thendoo

In Thendoo, Recordings turn a meeting into a summary with decisions, open questions and suggested tasks you approve before they’re created, saved in a Doc linked to the calendar event and the people in it. Recording only starts after you confirm everyone knows. The meeting prep and follow-up template gives you the four headings above, and new tasks land on Today with their dates, so follow-ups don’t get lost between calls.

Sources

• Rogelberg, S. G. (2019). The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance. Oxford University Press.