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<\/a><\/p>\nTable of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n If, like me, you\u2019re the one assigned to take meeting minutes, you should view it as an opportunity. In my experience, it forces you to listen closely to the conversation and decide what information is most important for the team to recall later.<\/p>\n Taking meeting minutes can also help you better understand complex concepts and processes. Research has found<\/a> that taking notes involves cognitive processing and creates new neural pathways, which promote a greater understanding of the topics and better retention of information over time.<\/p>\n Read on for some of my tips and tricks for taking the best possible notes.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n The best way to start is, of course, to have someone to take the meeting minutes. There are a few ways to manage this process.<\/p>\n First, you may have a dedicated person who always takes the note, like an assistant or coordinator. This person may be you. If so, hello and welcome!<\/p>\n Second, you may choose to rotate who takes notes each meeting. This is a great strategy as it relieves some of the load from an individual who may otherwise need to take notes in several meetings. This also helps provide diverse note-taking styles, making the meeting minutes more interesting.<\/p>\n Lastly, you can assign multiple individuals to take notes in each meeting, after which their notes are combined. This is helpful as one person may pick up on and record something another individual missed. My team typically uses this strategy, which I\u2019ve found incredibly useful since it also provides a safety blanket if someone has technical difficulties or can no longer join the meeting.<\/p>\n In this guide, I will share tips for instances where one person (you!) is the sole note-taker.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing more frustrating than joining a meeting where no one knows what they\u2019re meant to discuss. Issues like this can lead to being inefficient and unproductive, so it\u2019s helpful to be proactive by sharing an agenda.<\/p>\n I create a live, running document that I continuously update with every meeting occurrence. This Google document is linked in the meeting invite so everyone can access it on their own time.<\/p>\n The document includes the name of the meeting series, the most recent or upcoming meeting date, and a section at the top with the agenda, which helps guide my later note-taking. I organize the agenda as follows:<\/p>\n I primarily complete the agenda by emailing the meeting invite attendee list one day before the meeting and asking if anyone has any agenda items to discuss. Team members directly email me their topics, and I fill them out in the above table. The table lives in the shared Google Doc so everyone can view the information and prepare accordingly.<\/p>\n Another way to gather agenda items is to remind individuals at the beginning of a new meeting series to fill in agenda items in the shared Google Doc on a rolling basis before each meeting. While this puts more power in attendees\u2019 hands, it also leaves more chance for people to forget to enter agenda items altogether.<\/p>\n For this reason, I recommend reaching out directly and inquiring about agenda items, especially for recurring meetings. To remember to do this, I put a recurring reminder on my calendar the day before each meeting.<\/p>\n This method also makes it more evident if there are no agenda items for an occurrence and if the meeting can be canceled. After all, meeting hygiene is fundamental.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time for the meeting, and you\u2019re ready to capture the meeting minutes! Before you get started, consider how you will organize the notes.<\/p>\n As mentioned, I typically create a live, running Google Doc for recurring meetings that can be added onto during each meeting occurrence. However, this isn\u2019t how I take notes for myself.<\/p>\n I consider myself an erratic personal note-taker, and I typically jot things down in my iOS Notes app. While I find a method in the madness, I respect that this note-taking style isn\u2019t for everyone. That\u2019s why I adopted a cleaner, more organized meeting minute structure in Google Docs.<\/p>\n The notes come below the agenda and next steps (which I\u2019ll get to later). It\u2019s organized something like this:<\/p>\n This format works for me and my team because we can immediately see the most critical information. The meeting date, which is especially important for recurring meetings, is listed at the top of each section of notes. The actual meeting minutes have bolded headlines and are written in a bulleted list.<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>To save time creating a new meeting minutes structure, use a pre-existing meeting minutes template<\/a> to keep your notes clean and consistent.<\/p>\n Not to toot my own horn, but I have a good ear (15 years of musical training will do that) and an impeccable memory, which makes me a strong note-taker. However, these two qualities also make it easy to jot down meeting minutes verbatim.<\/p>\n But people don\u2019t typically want to read a word-for-word meeting transcription if they can\u2019t join \u2014 and especially if they do. It\u2019s easy to copy exactly what was discussed, but it takes a clever, attentive mind to note what is most meaningful.<\/p>\n My strategy is to copy down meeting minutes naturally and later go through and pare them down. If you\u2019d rather not do the extra work, you can summarize from the get-go. However, you don\u2019t want to accidentally miss some of the discussion when recording the most important information.<\/p>\n How best to summarize and not transcribe a meeting depends on your industry and the types of meetings you conduct. In my meetings at Nickelodeon, I search for keywords that alert me that the information being shared is brand-new to some folks and, thus, crucial to remember.<\/p>\n I also record the results of any debates or votes, such as if we vote on our favorite version of a new series’s key art, and any wide announcements or impending changes that need to be implemented into processes moving forward, such as the team hiring a new agency.<\/p>\n While some meetings are strictly verbal, there are times when materials get shared. For example, someone may share a slide presentation, document, creative assets, or a link.<\/p>\n First, check with the team member that the materials they shared are okay to be shared post-meeting for others to view on their own time. After all, some materials may be highly confidential.<\/p>\n If you get the go-ahead, include relevant materials throughout the notes. I recommend uploading PDFs and other documents, presentations, or video files to your company\u2019s preferred collaboration tool and including a link to the materials in the appropriate section of the meeting minutes.<\/p>\n Most meetings I attend end with action items, barring the rare few in which we solve everything live (the best!). Action items are one of the most important things I capture in meeting minutes, as these next steps are typically the result of the conversation we had in the meeting.<\/p>\n In my experience, action items are also often easily forgotten, which is why capturing them in the meeting minutes is imperative.<\/p>\n When summarizing notes, I listen for any asks or offers to handle something beyond the meeting time. For example, someone might say, \u201cSwetha, can you check with [Team Member] to see when the brief is due?\u201d and someone else may later add, \u201cI will hunt down that video file and send it to you by early next week!\u201d<\/p>\n I always record those kinds of statements in my meeting minutes with clear owners, verb directives, and due dates. However, I also include them in a separate section below the agenda and above the meeting minutes near the top of the live document, as seen below:<\/p>\n Listing attendees for recurring meetings may seem repetitive, but this point is especially helpful for one-off meetings. While people can usually view all invitees on the calendar invite, not everyone will necessarily join.<\/p>\n Create a list at the top of the meeting minutes listing those planning to attend the call. If someone lets you know they can\u2019t attend the meeting, include this information, too. That way, if someone had an agenda item that specifically applied to an absent individual, they can remove it and discuss it offline to save time. For example:<\/p>\n This also helps guide the next steps post-meeting, as a task may be assigned to someone who wasn\u2019t present and is unaware of their action item.<\/p>\n Taking the meeting minutes during the meeting is only half the battle. Preparing them to be shared afterward is an essential step.<\/p>\n If, like me, you prefer to take notes in a manner that may only be comprehensible to yourself, I recommend initially recording the meeting minutes in a space other than the live, shared Google Doc.<\/p>\n I have a separate, private Google Doc structured the same way where I can take notes freely. Post-meeting, I use this document to re-read the notes with fresh eyes and make revisions.<\/p>\n I check for spelling and grammatical errors and re-phrase points in clear subject + verb + object sentence structures (i.e., [Team Member] shared three variations of the trailer for approval). I also make content-based edits. Some parts can be cut down while others can be removed altogether.<\/p>\n After the notes are in a good place, I copy them into the shared document. Then, I add new action items to the Next Steps section and update the status of existing items. Lastly, I email the meeting minutes or alert attendees that the notes are available in the shared document.<\/p>\n This detailed guide should kickstart your next round of meeting minutes, but continue reading for a template to make the process even more seamless.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n I\u2019ve shared portions of my meeting minutes template throughout the previous section, but you will find my complete template below. I\u2019ve used this for all meeting note-taking at Nickelodeon over the last couple of years, and I hope it provides a seamless organizational structure for you, too.<\/p>\n [Company Logo or Name]<\/strong><\/p>\n Meeting Name:<\/strong><\/p>\n Date:<\/strong><\/p>\n Meeting Agenda<\/strong><\/p>\n Agenda Item<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n Owner<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n\n Next Steps<\/strong><\/p>\n Owner<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n Action Item<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n Due Date<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n Status<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n\n Not started<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n In progress<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n Paused<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n Complete<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n Meeting Minutes<\/strong><\/p>\n Date:<\/strong><\/p>\n Attended:<\/strong><\/p>\n Declined:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n\n Agenda Item 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n Agenda Item 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n Agenda Item 3:<\/strong><\/p>\n Agenda Item 4:<\/strong><\/p>\n Date:<\/strong><\/p>\n Attended:<\/strong><\/p>\n Declined:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n Agenda Item 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n Agenda Item 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n Agenda Item 3:<\/strong><\/p>\n Agenda Item 4:<\/strong><\/p>\n If you prefer a downloadable template that works across various file formats, check out our free meeting minutes template<\/a>.<\/p>\n Download HubSpot\u2019s meeting minutes template for free.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
1. Assign someone to take the notes.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. Create and share an agenda.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"meeting](\"http:\/\/www.pascaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/meeting-minutes-2-20241205-9508747.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n3. Format the document as simply as possible.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"meeting](\"http:\/\/www.pascaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/meeting-minutes-3-20241205-3963125.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n4. Summarize, don\u2019t transcribe.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. Include relevant materials.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
6. Capture action items.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"meeting](\"http:\/\/www.pascaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/meeting-minutes-4-20241205-9246862.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n7. Jot down attendees.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"meeting](\"http:\/\/www.pascaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/meeting-minutes-5-20241205-8131660.webp\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n8. Re-read and revise.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Meeting Minutes <\/strong>Template<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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