Asking for feedback how your JD system would handle these scenarios

10-19 Concepts 11 Core Concepts
1

Hello

I’m researching the JD system. I believe I understand the general concept of the system and the importance of the index. I am unsure what electronic tool I would use for the index and file system. I’ve read the majority of the posts in the forum.

However, I feel like something just hasn’t “clicked” yet to understand how it could work.

I could benefit from some real feedback for a few typical scenarios. How would you take the outcomes from these scenarios and store them in your JD system?

Scenario 1) A team meeting.

  • The boss creates an agenda for the weekly 90-minute cabinet meeting.
  • A designated team member writes general notes directly on the (MS Word) agenda (housed in MS Teams) as the meeting progresses.
  • As the meeting plays out, I take my notes and to-dos in a notebook (pen and paper).

Scenario 2) A 1-1 meeting.
*A weekly meeting with a department head that I supervise. The meeting’s purpose is to stay on the same page and discuss roadblocks, deadlines, etc.

  • As the meeting progresses, I take notes and to-dos in a notebook (pen and paper).

Scenario 3) A noticed meeting of a board of trustees.

  • A monthly meeting of an elected board of trustees.
  • The meeting is run for and by the trustees.
  • I attend to provide information.
  • As the meeting progresses, I would take personal notes and leave with to-dos.
  • The meeting would have formal notices, agendas, and reference materials provided for information and action items.

What would you do after the scenario meeting(s)? In other words, what actions would you take in your JD systems to store the notes and reference information from each meeting scenario?

Thank you

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2

Some notes on meetings before we get to your post. Because I think about this a lot at work too.

I usually have a category for meetings. It’s often 12 Meetings just because history. This is fine, but obviously you only get 100 meetings. Haha, that’s one week at work right? :crazy_face:

So each recurring meeting gets an ID, not each instance of a meeting. 12.01 might be weekly team meeting, but it’s not the weekly team meeting that happened on 2023-07-05.

But here’s an another thought: meetings relate to a thing. At least we hope they do. What is that thing? That thing has a category in your system. So shouldn’t meeting notes live in the category?

This is why I’ve started my IDs from .11 for a while now. Just like the 00-09 thing, this reserves some digits ‘up front’ for special use. One of those might be an ID that you always allocate to be for meetings about the thing.

So if 32 Data analysis then 32.06 is always Data analysis meetings. AC.06 is always the meeting for the thing, if relevant.

These are all just thoughts and not hard rules. Meetings are difficult in all the ways.

This is a nice example of how IDs can link a thing together across systems. Whatever your ID is – see above – you have:

  • The ID in the meeting invitation (which is where the boss creates the agenda?)
  • A folder in SharePoint for the Word doc.
    • I have a whole video half-recorded about how chaotic Teams is as a file system. Teams is not a file system. Do not store files in Teams.
    • (Teams already stores that file in SharePoint somewhere: the trick is to create it in a sane location first, then share it to Teams. If you create it in Teams, its canonical home is probably the author’s OneDrive. Bad.)
  • Your note with an ID at the front in whatever note-taking application you’re using.
    • In my notes I like to indicate the location of the thing that I’m talking about. In Markdown, most of my notes look something like this:
12.01 Weekly team meeting
---
> Location: SharePoint.
> Location: notes in this file.

# My notes
Blah blah...

As my notes are my index, this gives me a one-stop pointer to all of the items. It’s easy and super useful.

So the question is, what happens to those notes? I love hand-written notes – I’m a pencil nerd – but I tend to find they just disappear with time. Which might be fine, their purpose may have been served in helping your brain remember what happened.

Otherwise you need to get any actions in to whatever system you use for actions ASAP. Obviously I think that system should be organised by your JD structure, so actions end up in 12.02 Weekly department heads meeting.

This one might be more complex but I don’t think is fundamentally different to the others?

The trick with meetings is to close them out immediately. File the files, note the to-dos, transfer your notes to permanent storage if you need to. If you leave this until later it will not happen.

Your memory of the meeting fades fast. You have other meetings that are more important. Organising this meeting is a boring chore! So just do it, now.

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Yes. This is what I was missing.

Thank you for the insight into your system and your general thoughts about meetings and notes.

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