When you are going 1,000 miles per hour, you tend to push formalities aside and your essentials list gets smaller and smaller.
One item you absolutely cannot miss doing is recapping every single project meeting.
Here is how to do it quickly:
- For Microsoft Outlook, go to your calendar and right-click on your meeting invite, and click REPLY ALL.
- Your meeting notes header has just been created for you with a little drag and drop -change the following
- To -> Attendees
- CC -> Conflicts
- Leave the Time Date and Location
- Skip 2 lines
- Type Discussion
- Bullet point the topics that were discussed
- Type Questions
- List any open questions ask and answered or still to be researched
- Type Actions
- List by Name each item each person promised or was assigned to do; do not group items
- Delete any WebEx info, unnecessary invite text
- Add any attachments promised
- Add any need-to-know recipients of your notes
- SEND!
Now you have searchable notes in your Outlook and you can transfer them to a formal document if needed. OneNote has a similar action but if you carry your device with you, this is something you can do during the meeting, as you go, and actually, go to lunch at lunchtime.