I once tried to take notes on a laptop, but gave up on that years ago. I now take notes on paper. I listen for a few categories of things: todo's, discoveries

I once tried to take notes on a laptop, but gave up on that years ago. I now take notes on paper. I listen for a few categories of things: todo's, discoveries, open questions and next steps (which I guess are like todo's, but with more commitment from a specific person.) I tend to avoid writing everything down and focus on the things I know I might forget (or their might be dispute about later, which is why I ALWAYS write down next steps / todos. I think if you try to write EVERYTHING down, you'll be too focused on writing down what you just heard, you sometimes miss the next thing that someone says or don't have time to think about your response (if any.) Some meetings related to open source projects I've been involved on are done over zoom (or skype in the old days) -- most people gave permission to be recorded for those meetings, so it's easy to go back and replay something you might have missed. So you can focus on writing down only the highlights (like decisions, open questions, next steps) and for details like IP Addresses, specific versions, hostnames, etc. you can just go back and find it. But I think most corporations I've encountered really don't want recordings of internal meetings in case there's a law suit.