My Granola meeting setup

I stopped taking notes during calls about a year ago. That sounds like a loss until you see what I do with the time. I listen. The person across from me gets my full attention, and the notes get written anyway.

Granola records the meeting on my computer and writes the notes alongside it. When the call ends, I have the decisions, the owners and the follow-ups in front of me before I close the tab. The part I still do myself is the part that matters most: deciding what I actually agreed to.

The notes don't make the decision. They make sure nobody forgets it.

Setup, once

Four steps before your next call

1. 1. Install Granola and connect your calendar

   Granola reads your calendar, so every meeting shows up with its title and attendees. You don't have to start a recording each time.

2. 2. Check that no bot is joining the call

   Granola runs on your device and doesn't send a bot into the meeting. Say so in the first minute if the people on the call ask, because most of them will want to know.

3. 3. Type the goal in three words

   Before the call, write the goal in your own notes panel. Something like "pricing, timeline, owner." Granola combines what you typed with the transcript, so the summary follows your priorities instead of the order people talked in.

4. 4. Read the owners before you hang up

   If an action has no name next to it, ask in the call. Five seconds on a call saves two email threads later.

After the call

What I do with the notes

Before

• Notes half-written in a notebook
• Follow-ups sent a day late
• Owners guessed in the next meeting

Now

• Notes ready when the call ends
• Follow-up sent the same day
• Owners confirmed on the call

Once a week I run the notes from every client call through Claude. That's the step that turns a pile of summaries into a view of what my clients are waiting on from me.

Copy, paste, run

The two prompts I use

After a single call

Paste the Granola notes, not the full transcript. The summary is shorter and the owners are already named.

Prompt · Decision log · Claude

Copy

Below are my notes from a meeting with [WHO, COMPANY].
Turn them into a decision log with one line per decision: what we decided, who owns it, the due date, and whether it's confirmed or still open.
If an owner or a date is missing, write "MISSING" in that field. Don't fill it in for me.

Across several calls

Run this every Friday. It shows you what you promised, what slipped, and where you've been quiet for too long.

Prompt · Check-in across calls · Claude

Copy

Here are my notes from the last three calls with [CLIENT].
List three things: what we promised, what we delivered, and what slipped.
Put the slipped items first. For each one, tell me the last time we discussed it.

What I watch for

• A decision that no one can name an owner for is not a decision yet. Mark it open.
• Check the summary against what you remember saying. The tool is good, and it still gets emphasis wrong.
• Don't forward raw notes to a client. Rewrite the three lines they need.

Keep reading

Read this next

The handoff listWhat I handed to AI, and what I keptResearchMy go-to Perplexity prompts

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