To put it simply: note-taking makes any brainstorming, process, or project meeting better for everyone.
It’s a powerful engine to build a productive work culture for the future. But humans aren’t machines, so we need the right systems to remember and recall information we’ve heard.
Did you know your memory starts to decline within the first 24 hours you first learned something? This is called the Forgetting Curve. It measures how quickly we forget information over time if we do not attempt to retain it.
It’s not only up to our memory strength to retain information from meetings, but the approach to capturing and communicating the information to ourselves and others.
In this guide, we give you the templates, tools, and tips to transform your virtual and in-person meeting productivity so you’ll feel confident in your note-taking system!
How to Take the Best Meeting Notes (With Templates)
Summarize this article for me pleaseTypes of Meeting Notes
Just like there are different types of meetings, there are also different types of meeting notes. This section provides a comprehensive guide to help you find the best method that suits your note-taking style.
Cornell Notes: This is a systematic format for condensing and organizing notes, making them easier to review. The page is divided into three parts: cues (questions or main points on the left), notes (detailed information from the meeting on the right), and a summary at the bottom.
Quadrant Notes: This method involves dividing your page into quadrants (or boxes) such as important, less important, delegate, and defer. Each quadrant is used for different kinds of notes, allowing for priority assignment for follow-up execution.
Mind Mapping Notes: If you prefer visual representation, the mind map approach might be for you. Start from the central theme and create branches for different topics, filling each branch with relevant notes. Perfect for brainstorming sessions.
Outline: This method starts with the main topics and drills down to details in an orderly manner. It’s great for documenting minutes because the main points from the agenda are already broken down.
Charting: This divide-and-conquer approach is useful for recording several specific types of information. Create a chart and fill in its cells with points discussed during the meeting.
Sentence Notes: This straightforward method simply involves jotting down each point as a brief sentence as it arises during the meeting, without any additional formatting.
Each of these methods offers a different advantage. They are all compatible with ClickUp Docs, so you can choose the one that best aligns with your style and the needs of the meeting. Whether it’s the organic structure of Mind Mapping Notes or the task-oriented focus of Action Item notes, there’s a method that will help you maximize your productivity during and after each meeting.
Summarize this article for me pleaseKey Elements to Include in Meetings Notes
A well-structured and detailed meeting note is an essential asset for business productivity. It helps you keep a record of the ideas, actions, and decisions made during the meeting. Here are some key elements to include in your meeting notes:
Meeting Details: Include the date, starting and ending time, and location (physical or virtual) of the meeting.
Attendee List: Document all attendees and their roles for reference. Mention if someone was absent or if there were special guest attendees.
Meeting Agenda: List the topics that were planned for the meeting. This sets the structure of your notes and helps you go through the main discussion points in logical order.
Discussion Points: This comprises the bulk of your notes. Be sure to capture the main arguments, opinions, ideas, and questions that came up in relation to each agenda item.
Decisions Made: Document key decisions. Who made them? What alternatives were considered? Mention the justification of the decision for future reference.
Action Items: Capture who is responsible for what (tasks or follow-up) following the meeting. It should state who is assigned to each action, what that action is, and the due date if one was given.
Next Steps and Deadlines: Outline what needs to happen next, who is responsible, and when it should be completed by. This ensures that everyone is aware of their responsibilities moving forward.
Questions and Answers: Document any questions that came up, and the answers to these questions. If an answer wasn’t available, note who will find the answer and by when.
Important Facts and Statistics: Record important numbers, data, facts or statistics that were cited. These might be useful for future reference, or when working on related tasks and projects.
Attachments: If any documents were shared or discussed during the meeting, include them or a link to them in your notes.
By incorporating these key elements into your meeting notes, you’ll create a comprehensive record that will make follow-up actions clear, reinforce accountability, and serve as a valuable resource for those who missed the meeting – all while improving your team’s productivity and communication.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Take the Best Meeting Notes (6 Key Strategies)
Before the Meeting
Tip 1: Share meeting agenda responsibilities
In Reclaim.ai’s Productivity Trends Report, they learned professionals spend an average of 21.5 hours in meetings—over half a standard workweek!
Productive meetings are essential to the success of a healthy, growing business. As a team leader, project manager, or executive, you are tasked with nurturing processes and activities so every employee has the meeting tools and resources to get work done.
Use an itinerary template to plan your next meeting!
Allow your meeting attendees to contribute to the meeting agenda. This will accomplish two important things:
- Your attendees have a good idea of the meeting cadence and how their time will be spent
- Your notes will be richer in information and authority because different perspectives, subject-matter expertise, and knowledge are organized in one place
Tip 2: Use the meeting agenda to take notes
Your meeting agenda is the best environment for taking meeting notes because you’ve already outlined all the topics, key points, questions, and goals in one place. Especially when you’re facilitating the meeting and taking notes, it’s a challenge to juggle both activities.
The agenda helps you navigate from one topic to another while monitoring the meeting’s progress. If too many side conversations happen and meeting attendees get off-topic, you can direct everyone back on track. If you’re falling behind on time, you can skip or speed through less important topics.
More importantly, you should avoid the trouble (and unnecessary stress) of switching back and forth between the meeting agenda and a blank page for notes.
If you have the responsibility of taking meeting minutes—notes and decisions captured in formal meetings that require approval from senior leadership—check out our various free meeting note templates:
- Construction Meeting Minutes Template
- PTA Meeting Minutes Template
- Sales Meeting Minutes Template
- Release Notes Templates
- Safety Committee Meeting Minutes Template
- Shareholder Meeting Minutes Template
- One on One Meeting Templates
- Meeting Minutes Template
- One on One Meeting Software
During the Meeting
Tip 3: Filter the most important information
Somewhere between the ums and likes, there are important details to pay attention to when a person is speaking in a stream of consciousness. But with a little context, confidence, and creativity, you’ll be a note-taking wizard in any meeting scenario.
Here’s what this looks like:
Listen for the clues and cues the speaker is giving you for context
The rule of thumb is to be prepared for everything. But listen for any emphasis placed on what they’re saying, questions asked, and explanations shared that will affect the project/task/goal.
Be confident and ask the speaker to clarify what they’re saying
To summarize one point and not hear the key details of the next is something we all experience while taking notes! If you’re lost in what they speaker is saying, chances are, other attendees are too! The last thing you want to do is share misinformation. These meeting notes will be referenced later in time, so you need the truth and nothing but the truth! (Your team members will thank you later.)
Get creative and observe those around you
Is there someone in your workplace who nails meeting productivity every time? Who makes good meeting notes and conversations look so effortless? Take a mental page from their book and observe how they make the people in the room engaged and motivated. What comes out of the quality of their meetings is clear meeting notes that inspire action.
If you don’t have a person that comes to mind, we got you! At ClickUp, we are obsessed with focusing on efficiency and output.
The key to our meeting productivity success is organizing toward action. Our ClickUp Docs are always mobilized for teams in every time zone to get the information they need right away.
Here’s a peek at the four standard sections in our meeting notes: Action Items, Resources Needed, Follow Up, and Conversation Recap.
Tip 4: Tag team members in the document for follow-up
Working with cross-functional and multi-time zone teams calls for an accountability helping hand. People are jumping from one meeting to another and can forget to complete their action items or follow-ups.
Remember the Forgetting Curve?
ClickUp teams use the @mention and comment features regularly within Docs to track, update, and collaborate on work. This is perfect to keep together our related side conversations and the “I just remembered!” thoughts.
When people are tagged in a comment, they will see their names highlighted in their notification feeds.
After the Meeting
Tip 5: Keep up the momentum with a meeting recap
Approach this tip with the mindset no one has time to read through the meeting notes. Especially if management needs a quick status or recap about what happened, you’ll want to provide this brief overview in a friction-free location.
Each meeting should have a dedicated, recurring task to bridge relevant team members, Docs, and even other tasks for past, present, and future meetings.
How it works: Post a recap of key points in the task along with the meeting notes linked. You’ll save yourself and others time in the future from hunting down information. This connects all work in one central workspace and out of inboxes.
If you’re curious about ClickUp and want to start with basic organization, create tasks to organize all your meeting notes—project kick-offs, agile ceremonies, and new hire onboarding—start with the Meeting template!
Building this resource is also a valuable tool for team leaders to monitor the number and quality of meetings everyone is spending time participating in!
Tip 5: Utilize AI to Summarize, Paraphrase, and Format Notes
In a digitally-driven world, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a significant role in optimizing productivity. This is especially relevant when it comes to meeting notes. Rather than manually summarizing, paraphrasing, and formatting content, you can now utilize AI capabilities to perform these tasks swiftly and accurately.
ClickUp Brain, an AI-powered tool, proves to be a game-changer in this respect. ClickUp Brain is designed to help you navigate your large volumes of meeting data more effectively. It can read meeting notes, extract key points, and provide concise summaries. Generating quick conclusions from long discussions becomes easier, saving you valuable time for other significant tasks.
Paraphrasing is no longer a task that requires a considerable cognitive load. With ClickUp Brain, rewriting ideas in different words is automated to avoid any instances of plagiarism and ensure unique representation of thought.
Beyond summarizing and paraphrasing, the formatting of notes is crucial for enhancing readability and facilitating quick referencing. ClickUp Brain assists you in structuring your notes clearly with headers, bullet points, and various text styles to emphasize key information.
Using ClickUp Brain, you can automatically generate insights from your meeting notes, capturing the full array of thoughts, ideas, decisions, and action items in an easily digestible format. It not only boosts your productivity during the meeting but also ensures effective follow-ups by providing the notable takeaways and required actions right away.
Embrace the power of AI in note-taking with ClickUp Brain, and transform your routine meetings into strategic breeding grounds for actionable intelligence.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWho Benefits from Taking Meeting Notes?
- Contractors: Meeting notes are essential for contractors to keep track of any decisions that were made or changes that need to be implemented. Taking notes during a meeting allows them to stay organized and make sure they have the right details from the discussion.
- Corporate Companies: Taking meeting notes allows corporate companies to keep track of important conversations and decisions that were made. This helps ensure that everyone involved in the meeting is on the same page, and all team members are aware of any changes or updates.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBonus Tip: Instantly Capture Short Meeting Notes
Does your Google Drive look like this?
It happens to the best of us!
You’ll sometimes want to jot down quick notes for your eyes only or brain dump thoughts while you’re on a phone call or Zoom meeting. The problem is it becomes nearly impossible to find that one piece of information you know you logged.
For these scenarios, don’t use a Google Doc. Instead, use the ClickUp Notepad—the perfect digital pocket companion for note taking.
Access the Notepad from your browser or mobile device to build a repository of thoughts, checklists, and almost-ready tasks in one place! The ClickUp Notepad also includes:
- /Slash commands: Format your note with headers, bold fonts, lists, and much more
- Drag-and-drop: Add images, gifs, videos, and other files directly into your notes
- Search: Search your notes by keywords found in the title or description of a note
- Archive/Unarchive: Archive or unarchive your note
- Convert: Convert your note to a task—or a Doc!
A final consideration for the best meeting notes experiences: Your note-taking strategies and preferences will evolve over time. When you’re going through your options for the perfect note-taking tool, prioritize customization and flexibility.
The tool of your choice should save you time, not spend your energy. Spending your energy on things like note maintenance takes you away from the work moving the needle in your tasks and projects.
We know you’ll love the ClickUp Notepad and Docs to create your best note-taking system yet. If you need to work through any meeting productivity challenges, reach out to us anytime!
Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.