PRACTICAL EDGE
I Was a Horrendous Note Taker
Granola. I was never a note taker. My notes were horrendous and I forgot things, which is a rough combination when the job is sitting in rooms with people and remembering what they said.
I am now the world's greatest note taker. I did not get better at it. I stopped doing it.
WHY IT WORKS:
Notes do two jobs. The writing helps you process the thing while it is happening. The record gives you something to go back to afterward.
Handing the writing to software costs you the first job. If your notes were already bad, you were never collecting on that one anyway. What you get back is the second job, done properly, every time.
Zoom and Google Meet already hand you a transcript, so the online half is covered. The meetings nobody was capturing are the ones in the room. Granola runs off your computer's audio or your phone, so nothing joins the call and nothing needs to be a call.
The templates are the reason to bother. Build one for each kind of meeting you run, a one-on-one, a sales call, a candidate interview, and the conversation comes back in that shape every time. Interviews wander. The template pulls it back.
THE DATA SUPPORTS IT:
Di Vesta and Gray named the two jobs in 1972. Encoding is the writing. External storage is the record.
William Henk and Norman Stahl put numbers on it in their meta-analysis. Notetaking with no review returned an effect size of 0.34, which moves the average person from the 50th percentile to the 62nd. Notetaking plus review returned 1.56, which is the 92nd. Something like four and a half times the benefit sits on the review side, not the writing side.
Fisher and Harris ran a five-group version of this in 1973 and landed in the same place. The storage side did the heavy lifting. Having a good set of notes in front of you afterward mattered more than the act of writing them. Reading a good set of notes you did not write beats writing a set you never open.
HOW I USE IT:
Coffee meetings. I do a lot of them, with people in the industry and with candidates, and they are some of the most valuable hours in my week. I used to walk out with a head full of good information and lose a lot of it. Now, before I leave the table, the conversation is structured and my next steps are sitting there waiting for me.
Names, too. Somebody mentions they know so-and-so, it gets captured, and later I can make the intro with the context still attached.
I have always run one-on-ones on Zoom. I like them better in person, and now I can do them in person and still come away with a record. The summary is useful. The part I actually use is the list of things I committed to. That goes straight to my EA, she blocks the time, and the thing gets done. Before, I would completely forget, or the other person would have to chase me by email. Now I look like a professional with very little effort on my side.
The reviewing is the part I did not expect. In a good conversation I am engaged and I am not fully digesting it. Going back through the notes afterward is where the second half of the value shows up.
I cannot imagine being a student with this.
MY RULE ON RECORDING
→Look up your state. Twelve states require consent from every person in the conversation, and it gets murkier when the two of you are sitting in different states.
→Then tell them regardless of what your state requires. I say at the start that I am recording for AI notes, and I offer to send them the notes afterward. Nobody has ever asked me not to.
→Pause when somebody asks. Once in a while somebody wants to say something personal and asks me to stop, which is normal and expected, and I stop.
→Every meeting, no exceptions. The value only shows up when it is automatic. If you are deciding each time, you will forget on the one that mattered.
Free tier, and it caps your history. Business is $14 a month per user. Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, with an Apple Watch app for calls and walking meetings.
