By Wednesday afternoon my meeting notes look like a crime scene. Half sentences. Initials I can’t read. Three action items with no owner. And somehow I’m the one who said I’d send the follow-up.
For a while my fix was to copy the whole mess into an AI chat and ask it to tidy things up. It helped, but the AI could only work with what I’d scribbled. If I missed a decision, so did it.
These days I use Granola, an AI meeting notes app. It takes notes during the meeting, and afterwards it combines my own rough notes with the transcript. Then I can ask it questions about the meeting, or ask for a follow-up, right there. No copying and pasting.
The principle hasn’t changed, though. AI drafts. I edit. I decide what goes out. It never sends anything for me.
Here’s how I do it.
Step 1: Jot notes like you normally would
Keep typing your own notes in Granola during the meeting. They don’t need to be neat. A few words next to a name, a “???” by a deadline, “check budget” with no context. That’s fine.
Your notes tell Granola what mattered to you. The transcript fills in the rest.
Step 2: Let Granola enhance them when the call ends
Once the meeting’s over, let Granola enhance your notes. It uses the transcript to flesh out your jottings, so the half sentence you typed becomes the actual point someone made.
Give it a quick skim. You’re checking that it matches what you remember, not rewriting it.
Step 3: Ask for the follow-up
Now open the chat on that meeting and paste in a prompt like this:
Using the notes and transcript from this meeting, draft a short follow-up email I could send to the people who were there.
Include only:
1. Decisions we made (bullet list)
2. Owners and next steps (who does what, and by when if it was mentioned)
3. Open questions we didn't resolve
Keep it under 150 words. Use plain language. Don't add anything that wasn't said in the meeting. If an owner or date is unclear, put it under open questions instead of guessing.
Flag anything that needs my judgement before I send it.No long persona. No project management jargon. Just a draft you can work with.
Step 4: Edit, then send it yourself
This is the bit that matters most. Read the draft properly. Check names, dates and anything that sounds more certain than the meeting was. Soften, cut, add the human bits it can’t know.
Then copy it into your email and send it yourself. Granola drafts. You decide.
What you get back
Usually a few useful things.
Decisions pulled out of the noise. The “let’s push the launch a week” that got said once, halfway through, and never written down.
Names next to actions, with dates where someone gave one. And where nobody did, it says so instead of making one up.
Then there’s the open questions list. These are the bits you’d otherwise have filled in on someone’s behalf. Check them before you hit send.
Ask across meetings too
Granola also lets you ask questions across your meetings, not just one. That’s handy on a Friday when you’re trying to remember what you promised whom.
Something like:
What did I say I'd do in my meetings this week? List each action with the meeting it came from.Same rule applies. Treat the answer as a starting point and check it.
The ten-minute Wednesday version
If you’ve only got ten minutes between calls, skip the polishing. Enhance the notes, run the follow-up prompt, check for anything that wasn’t said, and send. A short, accurate follow-up beats a perfect one that sits in your drafts until Friday.
When to skip it
Skip it when the meeting was a chatty catch-up with no decisions. Forcing a follow-up onto that just creates busywork.
Skip it when you already agreed the next steps clearly in the room and someone else is sending the notes.
And think twice about recording at all when the conversation is sensitive or confidential. Always tell people you’re taking notes with an AI tool, follow your company’s rules on which tools are approved, and if in doubt, go back to pen and paper for that one.
Try it once
After your next meeting, let Granola do the notes, ask it for the follow-up, and spend two minutes editing. Then send it yourself.
If it feels clearer, keep the prompt. If it doesn’t, tweak what you ask for. The goal is fewer follow-ups stuck in drafts, not another system to look after.