If you only have a minute…

Taking notes will help you capture key decisions, action items, and insight, and ensure you don’t drop the ball. Quick hits to take better notes:

1. Use a shared document

2. Assign a notetaker

3. Notes should have three main parts: Decisions Made, Action Items, and Open Questions

4. End with a recap & share-out afterwards

5. AI notetakers are great as a supplement, not a replacement

Background

This is the newsletter's first issue, and it seemed fitting that I write it as a PRD; it’s a PM’s love language, after all. Taking notes in meetings can be tricky, especially when you might not be the fastest typer in the room (52 words per minute over here, call me Lightning McQueen).

Problem/Opportunity

Meeting notes are important. They help your team remember the key decisions and action items from any meeting. They memorialize the context behind a team’s thinking at a given time, which can serve as useful background for future projects. They also serve as a consensus-building tool if used properly. Most importantly, when your mind has become mush after four straight hours of back-to-back meetings, notes help you remember all the things you may or may not have promised to prioritize.

Requirements

Below are my five steps to taking better notes and leveling up your PM game.

1. Use a Shared Document

   • For recurring meetings → attach a dedicated notes doc to the invite.

   • For ad-hoc meetings → create a doc and share it at the beginning of the meeting so that more than one person can contribute to it.

2. Assigning a Notetaker

   • While I encourage multiple people to take notes on the shared document, I also recommend designating a notetaker at the beginning if the stakes are high.

3. Focus on The Holy Trinity

   • Your notes should have these three main categories: Decisions Made, Action Items, and Open Questions.

     1. Decisions Made: What was agreed upon?

     2. Action Items: Who is doing what, and by when?

     3. Open Questions: What still needs to be resolved?

   • Either create a section for each category or start each sentence with a “D:”, “A:”, or “Q:”.

4. End With a Recap

   • Before the meeting wraps up, take a moment to confirm the key takeaways with the group.

     1. “To recap, here’s what we decided: [list decisions]. Here are the next steps: [list action items].”

   • Consider sharing your screen and reviewing the notes live before the meeting ends.

5. Summarize Share Outs

   • Share the notes on Slack (or Teams 🤢) after the call and copy over the action items into the message, tagging the owners. 

6. My Take on AI Notetakers

   • Before anyone starts a rap beef with me, I know that AI notetakers exist. I’ve even used some of them 😱. These notetakers are great for posterity, but they lack judgment about what is truly important. They are a supplement, not a replacement.

   • If you have an AI notetaker at work, that’s fantastic; they can enrich your notes, but it just doesn’t hit the same as having notes from an actual human.

And that’s it. Consider yourself an expert in notetaking, my padawan.