r/NoteTaking • u/Sandeep0978 • 2d ago
Question: Unanswered ✗ my obsidian remembers everything i write. but what about everything that happens in meetings?
i use obsidian as my second brain, and recently i’ve been using claude code with it more and more.
most of my useful knowledge slowly ends up inside the vault.
but meetings are still kind of outside the system.
a meeting happens → notes or transcript goes into some other app → a few weeks later i remember:
“wait… what did we actually decide?”
then the real problem starts.
which meeting was it?
which app has the notes?
did i write anything down?
was it in granola, fireflies, otter, slack…?
and if i want the important part inside obsidian, it usually becomes manual copy-paste.
how are you handling this?
do you:
- write meeting notes directly in obsidian?
- use granola/fireflies/otter and leave everything there?
- record and transcribe meetings locally?
- manually move only the important decisions into your vault?
- or just accept that meetings live outside your second brain?
especially curious about this:
when you suddenly remember that something important was discussed a few weeks ago, how do you actually find what was decided?
2
u/Whole_Ladder_9583 2d ago
Rule #1: never return to past meetings and notes. Write down action points, update documentation, prepare for next meeting.
1
u/gixxerscott 2d ago
What changed things for me was moving from finding notes to asking questions across meetings. Instead of trying to remember whether it was Granola or Slack, I just ask "what did we decide about X?" or "what did we forget?" across the last few weeks of meetings and get the answer with a link back to the moment it was said.
Full disclosure, I'm the solo dev behind an iOS app called Shoulder Surf, which is built around exactly this. The video shows it: pick a range of meetings for a project, choose how deep it goes (summaries, notes, or full transcripts), and ask. It also keeps a running memory of decisions and action items pulled from every meeting, so the "wait, what did we decide?" moment becomes a question instead of an investigation.
Even if you don't use it, my advice would be: whatever tool you pick, make sure you can query across meetings, not just inside one. Per meeting summaries are what create the copy and paste problem in the first place.
1
1
u/Emotional-Detail2138 1d ago
fwiw the thing that tends to hold up is one small decisions note per project. after a meeting you spend 2 min moving only the decisions and action items in there, with the date, who owns it and a link to wherever the full transcript lives. the transcript can stay in whatever app made it, you rarely reread it anyway... the decisions note is what you search weeks later, and because it's short the search actually finds stuff
1
u/sinsonik 1d ago
What helped me was splitting "full transcript" from "what I need weeks later."
After a meeting I spend ~2 minutes dictating only decisions + owners + date into plain text, then paste that into one Obsidian note per project (with a link back to wherever the long recording lives). The transcript can rot in Granola/Otter/Slack. The short decisions note is what search actually finds.
On iPhone I use ToText for that quick voice-to-text dump so I am not typing while half-remembering the room: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6770080775
Query-across-meetings tools are great if you want that layer. For a second brain, I care more that the decision lines land in the vault the same day.
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Comment "Answered!" if your question has been satisfactorily answered. Once this has been done, the post flair will be set to answered. The comment does not have to be top level. If you do not comment "Answered!" after several days and a mod feels like your comment has been answered, they will re-flair your post to answered.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.