Taking meeting notes is a waste of time
In the age of LLMs and the cloud, why are any of us wasting time taking meeting notes?
Today we’re going to talk about something that’s been on my mind for a long time. I’ve been a corporate warrior for almost 15 years now. And the entire time I’ve been in corporate, I’ve hated taking notes in a meeting.
My brain just can’t do it. I can’t engage and type notes about what’s happening at the same time. I’d argue that, biologically, none of us really can. We’re not meant to multitask clearly from the research.
But STILL, in the year of 2025 I see people click-clacking away taking notes for everyone in a meeting. WHY?!?!?!?!? I think it's a total waste of effort and time to be manually transcribing notes in a meeting now. Here’s why, and I’d be willing to bet that in a few years taking notes will be a relic of the corporate past. Good riddance.
LLMs Transcribe Conversations Better Than Any Human
First let’s talk about LLMs. LLMs and machines can take notes for us much better than a human ever could. An LLM like OpenAI GPT-4o with Advanced Voice Mode definitely can understand you now. Their voice transcription is excellent with 99.9% accuracy. And it’s always on, never not paying attention if you want it to. Humans by comparison with our little monkey brains are totally fallible. LLMs are much better at this job, so why wouldn't you just let an LLM voice transcriber do that job? Combine this with the next technology and it really makes no sense why you’re typing notes at all…
Cloud Tools Auto-Organize Your Notes (No Copy-Paste Needed)
Cloud-based software has now made it so that an LLM can record + auto-save all of these perfect transcriptions, AND write a summary in whatever format you want, automatically. You literally copy them, paste them into Slack, add links if needed and 💩 poop them out to the required Slack channel. So again there's NO REASON to be manually writing notes down, machines have us beat. But the worst thing of all to me is…
Typing or Handwriting? You’re Guaranteed to Miss Stuff
Let's just say you're taking notes in like a Google Doc or notion with your hands typing like this little guy, who looks like everyone I’ve ever seen taking notes in a meeting:
Be honest now…
Are you really 100% paying attention while you’re doing this?
Are you actively engaging in the discussion to make a critical decision?
I DOUBT IT.
We’re all little monkey-brained humans parading around as if we’re omniscient, omnipresent machines. It’s a lie! You're bound to miss stuff while you’re typing frantically. It does no one any good.
It was understandable in 2015. We lived in the total stone age it seems. But LLMs + cloud-based storage already do this with much higher accuracy than a human can. And, while we’re being honest…
You're not likely taking notes to remember stuff for yourself. You're likely taking notes to share them with people afterwards. Critical decisions, action items, the lifeblood of corporate tasks that keeps things humming. And we're also doing it because it's the expectation at a company that notes are taken a record is logged.
Which makes sense, but even for that important purpose we’re using the worst tool imaginable: HOOOOMANS. Machines are better at it.
And finally, while I’m on a roll…
Most People Never Re-Read Shared Notes Anyway
Aaaaaaand there it is. Half the time, people don't even read the notes people stumble over themselves to write.
If you were in the meeting yourself, often you remember your action items you're referring to in your own notes. You might use the generated notes in case you forgot something or that you need to review your action items in the notes to make sure that those action items match up with the action items that you've assigned to yourself. Excellent use case.
But I’d argue 80% of the time, you’ve got your own notes and you’ll never look at the created notes again. 🙃
AND, if you're relying on a human that's fallible to make those types of notes for you, then you've already lost. Humans can't remember all that stuff, especially if you're trying to engage in the meeting and take notes at the same time.
So it's all a waste of time. Hopefully I’ve made my point now, and if you’re not using a tool to take meeting notes for you, you’re wondering what are some good ones. I think the best tools are the ones you have access to…
Granola, Notion AI, Zoom Meeting Notes—Whatever Gets It Done
I’d recommend checking any of these out that fit your corporate policy:
Notion AI. This is the one I typically use. It’s harder to get started compared to Granola but Notion/Claude say they don’t train on your data. Big plus for corporate meetings.
Granola. I love their UX and experience, but it doesn’t seem like I can guarantee non-training. But it’s secure otherwise and an amazing product so I’d recommend.
Zoom Meeting Notes. This one requires recording the meeting, which it seems like many teams don’t love. I agree, we really just need notes. But if this is the only option you have, it’s a good one.
Use any one of these. They spit out great meeting notes, complete with action items and key decisions you likely would have missed typing away. Save yourself.
Still Scribbling? Tell Me Why You’re Lighting Time on Fire
So dear reader, as you can see I believe strongly that if you’re taking meeting notes manually in the year of our lord 2025, you might as well take your time and just light it on fire. Personal notes? No issues here. I take them all the time. But meeting notes? Manually?! Ridiculous. That being said…
If you’re still doing it and plan on continuing…why? I would love to learn why. Comment below!