[Rutilate]

When do you do your capture of meeting notes, how much time does it take, and how much detail do you capture?

During meetings I generate a ton of action items (I keep trying to get my assistant to take on more of them but she's rather adept at finding more for me!). These are on paper or in a Word document.

When do you folks capture these and at what level of detail? I'm finding that after an hour long meeting it is taking me about ~20 mins to break everything down into next actions, put them in the appropriate projects, and capture everything I'm waiting for from my employees. Is this normal? It doesn't seem necessary to keep track of each task assigned my employees (not true for all of them, tho).

Biggest problem: this kind of time doesn't exist in my schedule and so it doesn't quite get done.

Regards,
Rutilate

[hypotyposis]

Yep, that sounds about right to me. In my experience, transcribing meeting notes doesn't last nearly as long as the meeting but takes up a substantial amount of time; extra items are generated as I read through the notes and think about what was discussed again, which adds yet more time. My best experiences with this kind of stuff has been when I did that consistently during my weekly review and followed good GTD practice. I've been debating getting one of those fancy e-pens to avoid having to actually go through my physical inbox every time I need to transcribe notes, but I think that's more gadget envy than anything else.
Do you do weekly/daily reviews and if so how much time do you allot to each? This might be a place where you could fit in the transcription.

[Rutilate]

I've thought of getting an ipad to help ease the note taking/transfer process, but like you, I think that is more device envy than real timesaving effort.

When I do the daily review it seems far easier to keep up with these. Perhaps the real question is how to remain motivated to do the daily review when I work myself so long throughout the 12 hour days that I feel too exhausted at the end to do much more of anything than shut off the lights and go home.

[whpalmer4]

Could your answer be as simple as starting the day out with the review?

[Rutilate]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Could your answer be as simple as starting the day out with the review?

That's the way that I had always done things before reading David Allen, who suggests that it should be done in the evening. His logic is sound in that I don't want to stay at work any longer than necessary and so don't keep doing just one more thing during an evening review, and it means that I can immediately dive in the next morning without distraction. Mornings are my most creative, productive best and I'd like to use them. Unfortunately, the current system isn't working as well.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Rutilate

That's the way that I had always done things before reading David Allen, who suggests that it should be done in the evening. His logic is sound in that I don't want to stay at work any longer than necessary and so don't keep doing just one more thing during an evening review, and it means that I can immediately dive in the next morning without distraction. Mornings are my most creative, productive best and I'd like to use them. Unfortunately, the current system isn't working as well.

I think he would forgive you for doing it in the morning if it made your system run more smoothly. Set yourself an appointment first thing for 15 minutes, don't let yourself miss it or go over. An abbreviated review is better than one you skip. Take advantage of OmniFocus' ability to have different projects on different review cycles.