Note Taking in 1-1's

I have several regular meetings with a handful of people. These meetings are often peer-to-peer or manager-to-person type meetings. Here is how I use Obsidian to take notes during these meetings.

Create the Person’s Note

Before the first meeting, I make a note with the person’s name. Naturally, I use a template for this text.

# {{title}} Background

# Topics

- [ ]

# Action Items

## Me

- [ ]

## {{title}}

- [ ]

Over time, I fill this template in like this:

# Andy Nelson Background

- University of Bedford
- Likes jazz drumming
- Partner is Wendy Lam

# Topics

- [x] Next semester's classes
- [x] LinkedIn Tutorial
- [ ] Career goals review
- [ ] Miles Davis album list

# Action Items

## Me

- [ ] Send goals template

## Andy

- [ ] Write Career Goals

• Background is for the anything interesting about them. I usually pull most of this from our first meeting, but I’ve been known to add to it.
• Topics is for anything I want to make sure to mention at our next meeting. I use checklists for these.
• Action Items gets any tasks we assign to each other during the meeting. Again checklists for these.

Meeting Day

• Before the Meeting
  • List the meeting in the Calendar section of the today’s note, with the time and a link to this file
  • Copy the open Topics from this note to today’s note as an agenda
• During the meeting
  • Take notes as needed in today’s note
  • Mark discussed Topics and Action Items complete
• After the meeting
  • Brain dump any notes that didn’t make it to the Daily Note
  • Mark discussed Topics and Action Items complete in this file, too
  • Add any new Topics, Action Items, other background items, or expand this file

Between Meetings

I will add new Topics to the Person’s note as they come up. The Linked Mentions tab becomes a great historical list of our 1-1 meetings.