Guide

How to write meeting minutes

The short version: record what was decided and what happens next, not what was said. Write each decision as a statement that is now true. Give every action an owner and a date only where the meeting actually named one — and leave both blank where it did not. Write them up the same day and circulate them with a deadline for corrections.

The rest of this page is the seven steps in order, what to leave out, the mistakes worth knowing about, and — the part most guides skip — the same conversation minuted badly and then well, so the difference is visible rather than described.

If what you actually need is the document rather than the method, the meeting minutes template is one page away and there is nothing to sign up for.

The seven steps

Three of them happen before anybody speaks, which is where most of the difference is made.

Agree who is writing them before the meeting starts
Not at the end, and ideally not the person chairing. Running a meeting and minuting it at once is how decisions end up recorded as discussions — the chair is thinking about the next question, not about what was just settled.
Start from the agenda, not from a blank page
Put the headings in before anyone speaks, one per agenda item. A blank page at the start of a meeting is why minutes turn into a running commentary: with nowhere to put a remark, everything gets written down in order.
Write decisions and actions as they happen, not the conversation
The moment something is settled, write it as a settled thing. If you try to capture the discussion and extract the decisions afterwards, you will be reconstructing from your own shorthand — and the parts you were least sure about are the parts you wrote down worst.
Record what was decided, not who said what
Outside formal minutes, where a motion needs a proposer and a seconder, attribution costs more than it gives: people become careful about what they say in front of whoever is writing it down. Note the decision and who owns the follow-up, and leave the discussion unattributed unless somebody asks to be on the record.
Leave a blank where the meeting left a blank
If nobody was named, the action is unassigned. If somebody said "by Friday", that is not a date. Writing in the likely name and the likely date is the single most common way minutes become fiction — and the reader cannot tell which lines were agreed and which you filled in.
Write them up the same day
While you can still tell what your own notes meant. A day later you are working from the notes alone, and anything ambiguous gets resolved in whichever direction feels tidiest, which is the direction that invents things.
Circulate them, and say how a correction gets made
Send them to everyone who was there and everyone affected, and add one line: "corrections to me by Thursday, otherwise this is the record". Minutes nobody can correct are not a record, they are your version of events.

What to write down, and what to leave out

The second list is the harder one. Minutes get long because leaving something out feels like losing it.

Write it down

Every decision, written as something that is now true.
Every action, with an owner where the meeting named one.
Numbers, dates and figures somebody quoted.
Links, documents and versions referred to.
An objection, if the person raising it asked to be on the record.
Who was there, who was expected and did not come, and when it happened.

Leave it out

The discussion. Minutes are the outcome, not the route to it.
Who said what, outside a formal motion that needs a proposer.
Anything you are guessing at — a likely owner, a likely date, a half-heard number.
Your own view of whether the decision was a good one.
The side conversation that happened while the meeting was ending.
Anything somebody said in confidence, or would be surprised to read.

The same meeting, minuted badly and well

Eight lines of an invented conversation about a launch date. Nobody in it is real. Everything below is written from these lines and nothing else — which is the whole discipline.

What was said

Sam: So, the launch date. We said the 14th, but the copy still isn't signed off.

Ade: The copy is fine. It's the legal review that hasn't come back.

Sam: Can we go on the 14th without it?

Ade: No. If legal hasn't cleared it, we can't publish.

Priya: Then we move it. The 21st?

Sam: The 21st works. Is everyone happy with the 21st?

Ade: Fine by me.

Priya: I'll let the agency know. Someone needs to chase legal, though.

Sam: Yes. Let's get that moving this week.

How it usually gets minuted

Five lines, and four things wrong with them.

- Sam raised the launch date and said the copy wasn't signed off.
- Ade disagreed and said the copy is fine but the legal review hasn't come back.
- Discussed whether we could go ahead anyway. Ade said no.
- Priya suggested the 21st and everyone agreed.
- Ade to chase legal by Friday.

It follows the conversation. Four of the five lines are about how the group got there, and none of them says what was settled.
It quotes people. Everyone now has a position on the record in a meeting where nobody asked to be quoted.
The decision is buried. The launch moving is the only thing a reader needed, and it is the fourth bullet, phrased as a suggestion.
The last line is invented — twice. Nobody gave the legal review to Ade, and nobody said Friday. The meeting said “someone” and “this week”.

How to minute it

Shorter, and it answers more.

## Decisions

- **The launch moves from the 14th to the 21st**

  The legal review has not come back, and publishing without it was ruled out.

## Action items

- [ ] **Tell the agency the launch is now the 21st** — Owner: Priya · No due date · To do

- [ ] **Chase the legal review** — Unassigned · No due date · To do

  The meeting agreed this should happen "this week" without naming a person.

The decision is a statement. The discussion is gone and nobody is quoted. Priya owns an action because she volunteered for it; the legal review is Unassigned because nobody took it, with the words from the meeting kept underneath so the next reader can see what was and was not agreed. Neither item has a due date, because the meeting did not give one.

Five mistakes worth knowing about

Writing the conversation instead of the conclusion

The commonest one by far, and it produces minutes nobody reads twice: a reader has to work out for themselves what was settled. If a line does not say what is now true or what happens next, it probably does not need to be there.

Inventing an owner

Nobody volunteered, so the minute names whoever was nearest to the topic. That person did not agree to it, does not know they own it, and the item is politely ignored for a month. Unassigned is a real answer and it is the honest one.

Turning "soon" into a date

The meeting said "before the end of the month" and the minute says the 30th. Now somebody is late against a deadline that was never agreed. Keep the words and leave the date empty.

Recording opinions as decisions

Two people liked an idea and nobody objected, which is not the same as agreeing to do it. If it was not settled, it belongs under discussion or not at all — a decision that was never made is the hardest kind of error to unpick later.

Sending them a week later

By then the actions have either happened or been forgotten, and the minutes are archaeology. Same day, even if they are rougher than you would like.

The checklist

The seven steps as boxes, for the meeting you are about to sit in. This is the process, not the document — the document is on the template page.

# Meeting minutes checklist

## Before

- [ ] Someone other than the chair is writing the minutes
- [ ] The agenda headings are already in the document
- [ ] You know who is expected, so apologies can be recorded

## During

- [ ] Every decision written as a settled statement, when it is settled
- [ ] Every action written with an owner only if the meeting named one
- [ ] No due date unless the meeting gave a date
- [ ] Discussion left unattributed unless somebody asks to be on the record
- [ ] Numbers, links and objections captured verbatim where they matter

## After

- [ ] Written up the same day
- [ ] Nothing added that was not agreed in the room
- [ ] Circulated to everyone present and everyone affected
- [ ] A deadline stated for corrections

If you record the meeting instead

Every step above assumes somebody is typing while the meeting happens, which is the part that makes minuting unpopular: you are either in the conversation or writing it down. Recording moves the work to afterwards, when you can hear what was actually said instead of remembering it.

That is what Gorowame does. It records from the device in front of you — a room, a phone call, or a browser tab, with nothing joining the call — and writes the first draft: a summary, the key topics, the decisions, and the action items.

It follows step five, which is the one people find hardest. An owner is filled in only where the meeting named somebody who is in your workspace; otherwise the item says what was said and stays unassigned. A due date is left empty rather than guessed at. It is the same rule this page argues for, applied by something that has no incentive to tidy up.

What it does not do is decide what matters. A draft still wants a person to read it, cut what the room would not want on the record, and send it — steps four, six and seven are still yours.

Start free →

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Also here: the meeting minutes template these steps produce, and what recording costs.