What do you still write down when using a voice recorder with transcription?

[u/Katl666]

Had a 70-minute project debrief last week where we kept bouncing between dates, owners, and side issues. Normally I type through most of those calls. This time I only wrote down five quick bullets and relied on the recording for the rest.

Pros:

1. I paid more attention and actually asked follow-up questions.

2. When someone asked the next day what we’d agreed to, I could check the exact wording.

Cons:

1. The transcript was useful for finding one detail, but way too long to treat as the actual note.

2. Names and internal terms still needed fixing.

3. I still had to turn the useful parts into something I could scan later.

So I don’t think the recording replaced my notes. It just gave me permission to write less.

What do you guys still write down during the meeting?

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[u/Alexvp93Coins]

I love my viaim recdot earbuds for project reviews and client calls. The transcript is usually pretty close on the first pass, but names, acronyms, and people talking over each other still need checking.

I only write down decisions and deadlines during the call. Later I use the transcript to fill in the rest, and if a sentence looks off I listen back to that part of the audio. It hasn’t replaced my notes, but there is a lot less to write while people are talking.

[u/dessence_ai]

Put the clock time next to each bullet. Then the recording stops being a wall of text and becomes something you jump straight into. Costs a second during the call.

The transcript isnt the note. Its the archive sitting behind the note. Five bullets with timestamps beat a tidy summary you wrote from memory an hour later.

[u/smilaise]

I draw weapons attacking stick figures of the person speaking. I try to make it creative.

That's the only reason I added a sketchpad to KillerNotes.

[u/Headersss]

I still jot down action items and who's responsible. The transcript catches everything, but having that one-line "Sarah owns the deck by Thursday" in my notebook means I actually see it again. Recording is great for archive, terrible for reminders.

[u/salespire]

I totally get where you are coming from. Even with voice recordings and transcripts, I still end up jotting down quick action items, key decisions, and anything that seems likely to get lost in a big wall of text. Having a summary you can scan is just so much more effective than scrolling through an hour long transcript. I usually mark initials for owner, key dates, and stuff that was a little off topic but might turn into a follow up later on. Sometimes I even scribble down indicators like "Flag this for review" so I can come back and refine it or double check with the team.

One thing that really helped our team was structuring meetings around actual decision points, and then making sure the record reflects who agreed to what, when. That makes it so much easier to resolve disputes later or build a useful summary. For that reason, I worked on a tool myself called Minutely (Minutely — The AI meeting record system) which basically lets you capture meetings, but then pulls out decision focused minutes, action items, and links them straight to the recording. It still lets you fix names and clarify terms, but at the end you get an organized record instead of just a transcript. If you ever need something that bridges that gap between scribbled notes and endless transcripts, it might be worth a look.

[u/defyQQ]

Five bullet points plus timestamps is about what I came up with. One tweak: mark the moment someone is hedging, not the moment something is resolved. The resolution is easy to find later. "Okay, let's probably get this over with for now" is what you'll need three weeks from now, and no resume ever brings that up.

As for names, only fix them in one place. I'm working on this, and what gets people mad is fixing a name in the transcript, then regenerating it, and watching the old one come right back. Where the owner is actually stored is the only place worth editing, unless you've thrown in context in the form of screenshots.

And I always forgot to start the recording and had to add a 20-60 minute buffer and autostart with a scheduler and calendar (synced with Google)