If meetings make up a significant chunk of your week, this post is for you. Traditional note-taking takes time and your attention away from the speaker. Yet, during the meeting, traditional notes give very little in return.. save perhaps the ability to recall a forgotten data point.
The irony is, you probably forgot it because you were splitting your attention and working memory between the meeting and taking notes.
I wanted a system that would reduce the amount of note-taking needed in meetings so that I could give more attention to the room. But, more than that, I wanted a note system that would surface past notes relevant to the current discussion to help me perform at a higher level.
In short, I wanted a note system to help me, not hinder me in meetings.
The solution
Titans of industry don't walk into meetings unprepared. No, they have 'people' who prepare briefing packages for them. So they walk in with all the facts in hand; it helps them context-switch and maximizes each meeting's value.
So all you need to do is get a team of assistants to pull the data you need from your past notes, the company wiki, CRM, the internet, etc., curate it, and build you a briefing package.
Or, you could use a Personal Knowledge Graph (PKG) like ixnote.
It's rare to go into a meeting knowing nothing. If it's an internal meeting, you have prior knowledge of the people, projects, topic, etc. If it's a sales meeting, even a first meeting, you should already know who you are meeting, the company, and the topic.
If you had captured that knowledge in a PKG as you learned it, you would have built up a valuable resource to help you in the upcoming meeting. In effect, you would have built yourself an on-demand briefing pack.
A meeting with ixnote
As the meeting starts, you tap import; ixnote creates a new node for this meeting with an attached node for each attendee, like a meeting MindMap. Then you link the topic nodes. Each node has context, a web of connected nodes. All that just got added to this meeting's MindMap; valuable context tailored to this set of people, and this topic, at your fingertips.
Boom!
We're just a minute into the meeting, pleasantries are still being exchanged, but you already have your briefing package built. Look at you go, you titan of industry you!
As the meeting progresses, your focus is on the conversation. As people share information worth capturing, you enter and link it, expanding your knowledge graph. The information you need to answer questions confidently is on your screen or just a tap away. No flipping through old notes, crawling CRM, or scanning product PDFs. It's all at your fingertips; it's all connected.
You gave the meeting your full attention, answered questions with confidence, captured follow-up tasks, and built upon your knowledge; another fruitful meeting in the bag, rinse and repeat.
Populating the graph
But how did all this magical information get into your PKG in the first place?
If you're just starting, you can seed the database with useful information; your company's product list, technical and pricing info, org chart, existing clients plus the products they use (for reference), terminology cheat sheets, etc. This will give you a good start and make the knowledge graph useful from the first meeting.
The real value builds over time; you capture and link facts, thoughts, and stunningly good ideas (aren't they all!) with each passing meeting and hour of learning.
Call to action
Like compound interest, compound knowledge is not a shortcut; it takes time and will make you rich. So start using a Personal Knowledge Graph today.