Productivity
Four lines, ninety seconds, before the next meeting
A forty-five minute transcript is not notes; it is a haystack. What you want is the four things you personally took away, and you have about twenty minutes before they fade.
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Why transcripts are not notes
Meeting transcription tools are good, and this is not an argument against them. But a transcript is a record, not a set of notes, and the two get conflated.
| A transcript | A dictated note | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | Thousands of words | Four lines |
| Contains | Everything said | What mattered to you |
| Filtered by | Nothing | Someone who was there |
| Read again? | Rarely | Yes, because it is four lines |
| Captures what was not said | No | Yes — hesitation, avoidance, tone |
| Useful in six months | Searchable | Immediately |
The row that matters is the second to last. The most valuable thing you take from a meeting is often not in the words: the pause before an answer, the topic they steered away from, the person who did not speak. A transcript cannot record that and you can.
The ninety-second format
Four things, in this order, because the order matters when you are speaking without a plan:
- What was decided And what was explicitly not decided, which is the half everyone omits and the half that causes the next meeting.
- What you have to do Yours specifically, with a date if one was said. Not a list of everyone's actions.
- What surprised you The richest line. A reaction you did not expect, a fact you did not know, a position that moved. This is the one that decays fastest and is worth the most.
- What to check The thing you nodded along to and are not sure about. Writing it down is the difference between checking it and quietly not.
What it looks like
Typed later, if at all
Discussed Q1 roadmap. Action: follow up with design.
Dictated at 11:47, three minutes after the call
Decided: the migration goes first and the redesign slips to Q2. Not decided: who owns the migration, and Marcus deflected twice when I asked — worth noticing. My action: get a scoped estimate to Priya by Friday. Surprise: finance has already budgeted for the redesign this quarter, which nobody mentioned until the last two minutes and which changes the argument for slipping it. To check: whether that budget lapses or rolls over, because if it lapses the whole decision is wrong.
Fifty-five seconds. The last line is the one that saves a fortnight, and it is exactly the line that does not get typed at six o'clock.
Making the habit survive
- Make it a snippet. Four headings from three spoken words, then dictate into each. The structure removes the "what was I supposed to capture" hesitation that kills the habit in week two.
- Do it for one meeting type first. Client calls, or one-to-ones. Not every meeting. A habit that applies to everything applies to nothing.
- Keep it to ninety seconds. If it becomes five minutes it stops fitting the gap and stops happening.
- Teach it the names. Colleagues, customers, projects. A note full of misspelt names is one you will not reread.
- Put them all in one place. A single note per week beats a file per meeting. You want to be able to read backwards.
Alongside a transcription tool, not instead of
If you use a meeting notetaker, keep it. They do a different job well: a searchable record, an action list, and a way to recover something you missed.
The dictated note is the layer on top — the judgement a transcript cannot contain. Many people who use both find they read the note every time and the transcript twice a year, which tells you which one is doing the work.
Questions
Is this better than an AI meeting notetaker?
Different. A notetaker gives a searchable record; a dictated note gives the judgement of someone who was in the room, including what was not said. Most people who use both read the note far more often than the transcript.
Can I dictate during the meeting?
No — it does not work and it is rude. Take rough notes during the call and dictate the real version in the first five minutes after.
How long should it take?
Ninety seconds. If it is taking five minutes, it has become a document rather than a note and it will stop happening within a fortnight.
Does VV record meetings?
No. It captures your microphone only while you hold its shortcut and types the result. It does not join calls, record system audio or identify speakers.