Comment by orev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orev | Hacker News Reader

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I think a lot of people take this approach of recording everything (or at least try to once the idea of recording meetings is available), but you really need to think about whether it’s going to solve the problem you think you have. Having a full recording of everything implies that at some point you have to actually process the content (take notes, etc.), and you’re really just setting yourself up for taking double the amount of time than it would if proper notes were taken in the first place. You seem to be aspiring to use a techie solution to this, but would it really work in practice, and be worth the effort?

Consider that 99.9% of people are able to function pretty well without having to refer back to a full recording of every meeting they’ve ever had. What’s their secret? They just pay attention and take notes the first time through.

Is it possible you have some very specific requirements that no one else does? Maybe, but I’ve landed on the idea that this a really a form of procrastination — where the “paying attention” part of the process is being pushed off until sometime later, and really just makes more work in the long run.

> Is it possible you have some very specific requirements that no one else does?

No. Recording meetings may be a form of procrastination for you, but recordings can be valuable for a bunch of reasons. Tools like Otter and Gong make it trivial to transcribe and scan meetings, and to jump to associated audio if need be.

> They just pay attention and take notes the first time through.

Some of us are running those meetings, are focused on the conversation instead of note-taking, and don't have extra staff for note-taking.

You can also send the recording to people who missed the meeting - very useful for training sessions.

I'm specifically compensating for my own mental decline.

Additionally, I do take notes, and I keep a summary work journal to track what I did and key insights. My daily log is typically about 6-7 bullet points for my own use, but may reference JIRA tickets or other links with more information that is intended for others to consume as well.

As for my meetings, I take notes for actions and key ideas, but each meeting is typically less than 5-6 bullet points, unless it results in a lot of sub tasks to a larger one.

I don't want to review ever meeting, in fact, I don't want to review any meetings. The goal of the recording is to have the record that I can refer back to if needed. Which, incidentally is about 5% of my meetings. So 95% will never be looked at again. And that 5%, I'm not going to replay the entire meeting, Im going to use something like Otter.ai to process the audio into text with time stamps, that way I can skip to the relevant bits.

So creating more work? Not at all.

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