How to take notes in meetings
Mar 13th, 2007 by francis
You need three things to take effective notes in meetings: a large black sturdy notebook clearly marked with your name (a Moleskine is perfect for this: stylish, practical, and with a pocket to hide biscuits in), a pen, and a chair positioned so that no-one can see what you are writing.
Having all three of these things mean that you can be much more productive during meetings. You need to have a set of symbols to mark up your notes. I like to use a question mark for random thoughts which I have written down but for which I can no longer remember the meaning, an asterisk to highlight something that is important but I know that I will not do, not even if I discovered the secret to immortal life, and a spiral, because they look rather nice and if you stare at them for long enough they interfere with your vision in various ways that are more entertaining than listening to the discussion about whether the newly visioneered mission statement truly delivers a re-engineered corporate paradigm.
If the meeting reaches a difficult moment when participants are finding it hard to reach agreement, the best approach is to ignore them and instead to try and remember how to draw a house with a square body and a triangle roof without your pen leaving the paper. Alternatively,you could draw stick men in the corner of each page, so that when flipped through quickly it provides an entertaining abridged version of a film: Goodfellas, perhaps, or maybe the classics like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, or a Krskopolje art film, or the Weekend At Bernies duology.
If you underline and circle your notes with visible flourishes, people will think you are doing something important. The disadvantage of this is that they may come away from the meeting thinking of you as a successful and hardworking person – this is a no no, as they may then ask you to do things.
One drawback of keeping a meeting notebook is that the minute writer may come to you afterwards because they are unsure of their record of the discussion, and want to seek advice and clarification from the notes they saw you taking. You have a number of options here. One is to feign an immediate illness, such as Swabian-Hall malady, which is non-threatening but will buy you time. Another is to throw your notebook in the bin (which, as it has nothing of any worth in it, will not inconvenience you at all).
The preferred option though is to ask the minute taker what they think the minute should read. Consult your notebook and then change one minor part of their minutes at random in a way that doesn’t make any difference to the overall meaning. They will then be happy, and grateful to you, and as nobody will ever read the minutes anyway, no harm will be done. Minor amusement can be gained by choosing a subject – for example, breeds of pigs – and trying to work references to any changes that you suggest that subject into minutes, reports, and company accounts. Like the three in this post.