How to take meeting notes like a pro

With hybrid and remote work here to stay, companies increasingly rely on Zoom meetings to collaborate, ideate, and align on organizational goals. That’s when clear and accurate meeting minutes come into play. Effective note-taking helps meeting participants follow up on agenda items, assign key action items, and jot down next steps to share with team members.

Read on to learn more about:

• Why good meeting notes matter
• Ways to improve your note-taking system
• Pro tips for effective meeting notes—including a best-practice example
• How to take better meeting notes with FigJam

Why good meeting notes matter

As the designated note-taker for your team meeting, you can capture meaningful takeaways in your meeting minutes that help:

• Keep team members aligned with a written record of workflows, goals, milestones, and progress.
• Outline priorities and deadlines for team members to better understand their roles and streamline project management.
• Recap any challenges or obstacles that could affect product development.
• Inform key stakeholders who couldn’t attend the meeting about any action items that affect them.

Best-practice meeting minutes example

With good meeting notes in hand, your team can more easily retain, revisit, and apply key information to accomplish great work. To see effective meeting notes in action, check out this project kickoff example from the Figma design community.

Sketch out key points with visual note-taking

Visual note-taking (also called mind mapping) uses shapes, diagrams, doodles, and text to capture a-ha meeting takeaways in real time. This note-taking style helps keep teams engaged while making it easier to remember key ideas. The note-taker can organize information and flesh out concepts more easily, while encouraging free-flowing brainstorming during and after the meeting.

How to take effective meeting notes in 4 steps

To raise your note-taking game, start with FigJam’s professional meeting notes template. Then follow these four simple steps to take better meeting notes:

Step 1: Build in prep time before your meeting.

Familiarize yourself with the meeting agenda, previous meeting minutes, background materials, and attendee list. Then decide on a note-taking method to suit your session’s objectives. Pro tip: Figma offers meeting notes templates for daily standups, project kickoffs, project retrospectives, and more.

Step 2:  Use shorthand during the meeting.

Let the meeting agenda act as your framework when taking notes. Use abbreviations and symbols to simplify note-taking, and add headings, bullet points, and numbered lists for readability.

Step 3: Clean up your notes right after the meeting.

Fact-check, edit, and structure your meeting notes as soon as the meeting ends—and your memory is still fresh—to make sure you’ve captured all the important details clearly. Highlight any talking points that need follow up or validating with meeting participants.

Step 4: Store and share your meeting notes.

Save meeting notes where team members can access them. Then circulate a link to meeting minutes as soon as you can—the same day if possible. This helps attendees stay on top of the action items, deliverables, and due dates they agreed to.

Ways to improve your note-taking system

Whether you’re taking meeting minutes for daily standups or a project kickoff, you need productive meeting notes to summarize key ideas and action items. Prep work can help you cover the basics, including meeting agenda, attendee names, status updates, and any changes to previous meeting notes. But during the meeting, you need to stay alert to record information shared by team members, and capture key decisions, next steps, and tasks assigned.

How can you be sure you’re covering the most important points? The Cornell method for note-taking recommends applying the five Rs: record the meeting (ideally with transcription tools), reduce key points to summaries, recite (or recap) key ideas in your own words, reflect on what you learned, and review your Cornell notes periodically for alignment and retention.

To take even better meeting notes, look over previous meeting minutes. Can you find important points easily, or is there too much information? Consider your meeting goals, and tailor your note-taking accordingly. For example, a brainstorming huddle on future team-building activities probably doesn’t require as much detail as a buttoned-up business strategy session or product design review.

3 pro tips for good note-taking

1. Cherry-pick your content. Don’t try to write everything down. Instead, focus on content with the most impact—including key points, ideas, decisions, and deliverables.
2. Hit the record button. If you record and transcribe meetings, you can verify action items, takeaways, and other important details more easily. Make sure to get everyone’s OK before you start recording.
3. Include attributions. If you’ve got a lot of attendees, add their initials to your meeting notes. Having a written record of who said what helps keep team members accountable.

Take better meeting notes with FigJam

Running a brainstorming session or weekly team check-in? For your next meeting, use FigJam’s meeting minutes template to:

• Summarize the meeting agenda and add attendees, date, and goals.
• Track the conversation for clear communication among team members.
• Finalize action items and key decisions. Then share your meeting minutes with stakeholders for buy-in and approval.

For more tools to streamline your meetings and keep teams informed, check out FigJam’s ready-made meeting templates. FigJam’s robust library includes templates for project kickoffs, sprint planning, daily standups, webinars, and more.

To see more creative approaches to team meeting minutes, explore meeting notes templates built by the Figma community.

Ready to take your best notes yet?

Sources

[1] https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/management/meeting-minutes/

[2] https://www.indeed.com/hire/c/info/what-are-meeting-minutes-and-how-are-they-used-in-business

[3] https://inkfactorystudio.com/blog/learn-visual-notes-beginners/