ℹ This is not a sponsored article, these are just recommendations of products multiple authors have expressed positive feelings about. Feel free to suggest any others in the Discord.

OneNote

One of the greatest note taking applications, Microsoft OneNote provides blank-canvas like pages where you can click and type anywhere. Integration with Outlook lets you simply create pages with all the meeting invite details, drawing tools, ability to print out documents and type on top of them, simple check-list capability, easy to search, quick shortcuts for tagging/flagging comments of interest, and friendly sharing/exports. It’s just a very very solid application. Because it’s cloud integrated, you can also work on it anywhere!

As a recommended structure for getting started, you might want to create a workbook/notebook (the parent file your notes are stored in) for each Financial Year (or in alignment to performance plans), with tabs for projects/themes/major works, and pages for individual meetings. If you use Outlook, you can click Meeting Details, pick your meeting, and update the current open page with a template including dates, times, titles and attendees to make it even easier!

Make sure you get the right version of OneNote via this link (formerly called “OneNote 2016”, not to be mistaken for the terrible lite “OneNote for Windows 10”). For any questions about the differences: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-difference-between-the-onenote-versions-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f

Obsidian

If you prefer writing in Markdown, Obsidian has positive reviews across the Discord. It might not be easily shareable, but it does have some neat features like visual relationships between pages using [tags].

You can read more at: https://obsidian.md/

But I’m not a world-record holding speed typist?

Much of a gamer? Have you ever tried typing chat messages in the midst of a fire-fight? You’ll get a lot of practice in touch-typing!

Jokes aside, there are plenty of other tools to assist you;

Remote?

Microsoft Teams Transcripts

If you use Microsoft Teams to host a meeting, you can either record the session or turn on transcripts for a copy of the full conversation once the meeting finishes. Useful for reviewing the meeting afterwards. Obviously it’s computer generated, so it won’t be perfect, but hopefully enough to supplement any notes you’re able to take.

More details at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-live-transcription-in-a-teams-meeting-dc1a8f23-2e20-4684-885e-2152e06a4a8b

In person?

When you’re hosting a meeting in-person, being engaged is super important, and you won’t always have a second person there to take notes for you.

Android Live Transcribe

Pretty self explanatory, does what it says on the tin: Makes a transcription of the conversation live via your phone, saved to your device. Again, it’s computer generated, so it won’t be perfect, but hopefully enough to supplement any notes you’re able to take.

If you don’t have it installed, you can download it via the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.audio.hearing.visualization.accessibility.scribe

They also have a little demo video and page: https://www.android.com/accessibility/live-transcribe/

I have more recommendations!

Awesome! Love to hear suggestions to help people do better! Reach out via the links directly below and we’ll be sure to add them!

Stefan Carton, Jacketed

Updated: 02/03/2023