For formal meetings I use pen and paper. For some specific activities I do where I can't take notes during the activity I use a voice recorder to take notes im

For formal meetings I use pen and paper. For some specific activities I do where I can't take notes during the activity I use a voice recorder to take notes immediately afterwords. If I'm sitting at my computer (like on a phone call) I use org-capture. If I'm out and about and I just need to jot something down I use the google inbox reminder on my phone. I did have a livescribe (a pen that records audio while writing, synchronized to the place in your paper notes), it was really neat, especially if I was both conducting a meeting and taking action items. The downside was it was a little awkward to tell people every time the meeting ran that you were recording it. But it did that job well. I have used One Note for a while, it's pretty neat but the lack of a clean way to archive notes like org mode has was really a show stopper for me. For me at least having a couple of different ways works best. The small hand held voice recorder is surprisingly handy. The pain is transcribing them although recently I simply copy the files to my computer and link to them in org-mode. For group meetings I also liked used to use a white board and the camera on my phone, although I don't have need for this myself anymore. I would really recommend not getting stuck on one technique for all situations, but use different things that work better in different situations. The key is having one system to put it all together, and for me at least that's org mode.