Meeting Summaries & Notes

Meetings are essential for collaboration but often leave us with scattered notes that are hard to use later. ChatGPT excels at transforming raw meeting content into clear, actionable summaries.

What ChatGPT Can Do With Meeting Notes

• Organize chaotic notes into structured summaries
• Extract action items and assign owners
• Identify key decisions made
• Create follow-up task lists
• Generate meeting minutes for distribution
• Highlight unresolved questions

From Raw Notes to Clear Summary

The Basic Approach

Take your messy meeting notes and ask ChatGPT to organize them:

Example Transformation

Raw notes:

talked about q4 goals
sarah wants to focus on retention
mike says acquisition still important
budget discussion - maybe 20% increase?
john will look into marketing automation
decision: try both approaches with A/B test
next meeting: friday to review results from last campaign

Different Summary Formats

Executive Summary

For leadership or stakeholders who need the highlights:

Detailed Minutes

For official records:

Action-Focused Summary

For teams that need to get things done:

Processing Different Note Types

Voice Memo Transcripts

If you recorded the meeting:

Handwritten Notes (Photographed)

Describe what you see:

Collaborative Notes (Multiple Authors)

When several people took notes:

Extracting Specific Information

Decisions Log

Questions and Parking Lot

Dependencies and Blockers

Creating Follow-Up Templates

Meeting Recap Email

Task List for Project Manager

Real-Time Meeting Support

During the Meeting

If you have a laptop open during meetings:

1. Take rough notes as usual
2. Paste chunks into ChatGPT periodically
3. Ask: "Organize what I've captured so far"
4. Continue the conversation to build the full summary

Post-Meeting Processing

Immediately after the meeting:

1. Do a quick brain dump of anything not in notes
2. Paste everything into ChatGPT
3. Request your preferred format
4. Review and send within 30 minutes (while memory is fresh)

Best Practices

1. Capture Names and Ownership

Always note who said what and who committed to what:

• "Sarah will..." is actionable
• "Someone should..." is not

2. Include Context

Even brief context helps ChatGPT:

• What was the meeting about?
• Who attended?
• What decisions were already made?

3. Flag Uncertainties

If your notes are incomplete:

Note: I may have missed some details about the budget discussion.
Please flag any section where the notes seem incomplete.

4. Standardize Your Format

Use the same summary format consistently so team members know what to expect.

5. Send Summaries Promptly

The sooner you send notes, the fresher they are in everyone's minds:

• Within 2 hours is ideal
• Same day at minimum
• Include a request for corrections

Exercise: Process Your Notes

Try this with notes from a recent meeting:

Key Takeaways

1. Capture imperfectly, process perfectly - Focus on getting information down, let ChatGPT organize it
2. Choose the right format - Executive summary, detailed minutes, or action-focused
3. Extract actionables - Decisions, action items, and open questions
4. Send promptly - Fresh notes are more valuable
5. Build templates - Create consistent formats for your team
6. Iterate as needed - Ask for different versions or additional extractions

Meeting notes are one of ChatGPT's most practical applications. With this skill, you'll never struggle with post-meeting documentation again.