This is personal. However, many of the people I had meetings with love this. So, here we go.
Quite a while back, I realized that anything digital, from phones to computers, tends to become or look like very official/non-personal and hence looks bad, especially in 1:1 meetings. I decided to go with pen and paper, in a simple Notebook (A5 or A7 is my choice). I’m do not write anything personal, but the points shared or noted down between us are enough to remind me of any points that I might have noted in my mind.
I’ve carried this habit to many other meetings (non-1:1s too), even when there is a note-taker (AI or otherwise). My meeting notes usually get shared or used as references by other participants.
Even during the meetings, other participant(s) sometimes contribute to my notes. I don’t hate digital mediums; in fact, I have used Freeform on an iPad just like I use my Notebook for meeting notes.
The interesting part is that I learnt to draw like Dan Roam[1] quite a while back. So, my notes contain texts with a lot of arrows, stick figures, shapes, etc.
Sidenote: A lot of conversations got sidetracked to discussions about paper, fountain pens, the way I write, etc.
I like pen and paper for meetings because I can take notes while asserting dominance through constant eye contact. I can touch type, but I need to be looking at the screen to achieve the same level of accuracy with which I can blindly write.
Tangential: I also recently switched to paper without lines after 20 years, and it's been quite liberating.
Fortunately, I was trained/forced to write on plain blank papers in school. So, I can pretty much course-correct my invisible lines. However, when I have a choice, I’ve decided to stick to dotted grids.
Hmmm! How many meetings do you do in a week? Unless, you are building a Meetings App or your company is about Meetings, I'd suggest reducing the Meetings enough that you don't have to Transcribe everything.
My meeting notes are, well, like comic books; quite a lot more drawings. So, people usually take pictures or I just take pictures and email them.
For instance, I was once in a meeting at a company planning the product roadmap for the next 3-5 years. I did a timeline-of-sort note with circles (inspired by DaisyDisk), complete with a few different colors. That note became the "official" starting base for the plan, shared across the company and referenced by the team.
If you are a manager and having 1-1s the very use case he called out, you may have 1-1s with 15+ people every two weeks.
I am a staff consultant. I am constantly in meetings with customers, sales, my management for high profile clients, people working on projects I’m leading, internal strategy go to market meetings.
Quite a while back, I realized that anything digital, from phones to computers, tends to become or look like very official/non-personal and hence looks bad, especially in 1:1 meetings. I decided to go with pen and paper, in a simple Notebook (A5 or A7 is my choice). I’m do not write anything personal, but the points shared or noted down between us are enough to remind me of any points that I might have noted in my mind.
I’ve carried this habit to many other meetings (non-1:1s too), even when there is a note-taker (AI or otherwise). My meeting notes usually get shared or used as references by other participants.
Even during the meetings, other participant(s) sometimes contribute to my notes. I don’t hate digital mediums; in fact, I have used Freeform on an iPad just like I use my Notebook for meeting notes.
The interesting part is that I learnt to draw like Dan Roam[1] quite a while back. So, my notes contain texts with a lot of arrows, stick figures, shapes, etc.
Sidenote: A lot of conversations got sidetracked to discussions about paper, fountain pens, the way I write, etc.
1. https://www.danroam.com