How to Take Good Meeting Notes: 7 Strategies That Work

In fact, according to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, one hour after a meeting ends, most people have already forgotten 50% of what was said.

In this article, we present seven strategies that professionals use to harmonize active meeting participation with thorough note-taking.

Preparing for meetings in advance is a surefire strategy to improve the quality of your notes.

You should always spend three to five minutes before each meeting reviewing the agenda and preparing for the discussion.

An effective way to improve the process of preparing for a meeting is to create a simple and pre-formatted template that includes the meeting objective, key topics, an action item list, and attendees.

This way, instead of creating a blank page for each meeting, you’ll use the template and fill it with the appropriate information. Plus, it’ll make it easier to pinpoint what information needs documentation.

Example of a meeting preparation template:

• Attendees
• Meeting objective
• Key topics
• Decisions/follow-up actions list

One of the main struggles for people attending meetings is identifying which parts of the discussion are worth noting. After all, not everything said in a meeting needs to be recorded.

A common trick professionals use to distinguish ‘meeting noise’ from relevant information is listening for trigger phrases.

Using the same notetaking structure for all meetings is a good way to reduce cognitive load and keep your meeting notes consistent. You quickly get used to that structure, and note-taking becomes continuously less intrusive.

We recommend following a four-section structure:

1. Fundamental decisions made: what has been agreed upon.
2. Next step list: who does what and by when.
3. Open questions and obstacles: what still needs to be resolved.
4. Contextual background and context: footnotes or essential background information.

This type of structure is compatible with all kinds of meetings, from client calls to team meetings, and makes it easier to review notes later.

In addition, using the same notetaking structure makes collaboration smooth through note sharing.

If you write down everything said in a meeting, you become a simple bot rather than an active participant focused on the discussion. To avoid becoming a passive participant, you should focus on documenting only pertinent information.

We recommend actively listening and writing down what was decided, the changes resulting from those decisions, role assignments, and issues that still need to be addressed.

One trick to understanding whether you’re taking notes the right way is to know how to answer what happens next rather than what was discussed.

In short, brief and goal-driven notes hold more value than lengthy, detailed transcripts.

Going over your notes after a meeting is as important as preparing for one.

We recommend spending at least five minutes after each meeting to guarantee that all notes are accurate:

• Review for missing information or unclear abbreviations while the information is still fresh.
• Ensure all action items are clearly defined and fully understood.
• Include any key details you recall but failed to write down.
• Send follow-up notes if further clarification is deemed necessary.

It’s fundamental that you go over these steps right after a meeting. Diverting your focus to something else (or waiting even one hour to process your notes) is enough to make cleaning them up much harder.

While there are many tips and tricks to improve taking down notes for meetings, advances in technology have led to tools that handle the heavy lifting of note-taking and transcription.

Modern note-taking apps and note-taking software solutions like AI notetakers automatically capture and organize meeting content without you lifting a finger. They let you stay immersed in the meeting and keep your focus on the conversation, without the fear of losing any essential information.

Here are a few options that professionals use:

• AI notetaking apps that use bots during meetings to automatically transcribe and summarize discussions.
• Bot-free apps like Granola that take notes in the background while letting you add your own personalized notes, enhanced with AI-driven context.
• Online meeting platforms with built-in recording and transcription.

These types of tools are excellent for high-speed discussions where traditional note-taking struggles to keep up.

Meeting notes aren’t valuable just to you – they’re also highly beneficial to others.

In that sense, we suggest establishing a team system for sharing and storing notes: For example:

• Create a shared workspace in productivity tools like Notion and Google Docs.
• Keep meeting information consistent (meeting type, date, and topics).
• Set up a system to assign note-taking for recurring meetings.

Sharing notes promotes transparency and helps businesses prevent knowledge gaps, ensuring that even those absent stay in the know. Plus, collaborative notes establish a knowledge base that outlives individual team members.

Ultimately, note-taking is about capturing what matters, not everything that’s discussed in a meeting. The best approach combines preparation, active listening, consistency, and innovative technology.

If you struggle to take notes during meetings, we recommend giving Granola a try or starting by implementing one or two strategies discussed in this blog. Then, depending on the results, you can gradually apply the remaining strategies.

In your next meeting, we recommend trying the trigger phrase method to see how it improves your notes.