How do you manage to keep notes across multiple discussions in a well organised and methodical fashion?
I am a manager and as part of my work I need to do a lot of discussions either in the form of 1-1 or in specific meetings.
I am not talking about discussion with my team members but with other stakeholders.
I usually keep my own private notes for the meetings and even though this works it becomes more and more of a hassle to manage as a process.
I have ended up with lots of google docs per stakeholder or per topic and it gets hard finding the proper doc as I move on through calendar events.
Something like Notes in Mac is more manageable as it is easily accessible and it UI is more focused, but porting Notes e.g. if I change my laptop or searching notes to find the right topic is also not that great.
What are some other approaches you have been using that help you being organized in this regard?
I was thinking creating some google doc whose sole purpose is to be a sort of table of contents for other google docs but there has to be simpler way for this. I'm not asking for a tool recommendation but an organizing technique, though if that technique relies on a specific type of tool say that.
Top Answer/Comment:
The easiest solution to "I can't find the right document" is to have less documents. Searching within documents is pretty simple, across them less so. You might have one document per project, or maybe just one for a chunk of time (month, quarter, year) depending on how big they get. I prefer the freedom of a document to the strictures of a tool that wants text in the text box and dates from the date picker. It's easy to add images, paste in URLs, bits of code, excerpts from emails, etc etc.
Adding text that will help with searches ("Wed 25th, John called me", "Thurs 26th, meeting with John and Steve") and going back after a meeting to expand abbreviations and fix spelling mistakes and typos will get you to the thing you need super quick. I'll also include a screenshot of something that was shared in a meeting, and later I might transcribe it if that text is something I need to search for.
You can't work out of a document like this. You take notes into it while conversations are underway. Afterwards, you might extract todos into a different tool, send a summary email, or write a more formal minute. But this all-the-details-as-they happened thing is just what you need a month or two later when you want to know who suggested something, or how Sue reacted to the news about Steve, or what the budget was before John adjusted it. I don't put any effort into editing or filtering when I take these notes. I am pasting, screenshotting, typing as fast as I can. The thinking and editing and such can happen afterwards. This is the full record. And it has helped me more times than I could possibly count, or recount.
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