HACKER Q&A
📣 bharath28

Managers of HN, how do you organize your 1:1 notes?


In the new year, I'm thinking about how to better keep track of 1:1 notes so I can keep track of things and add value to my team. Current workflow seems very ineffective. I'd love to hear how you do it and what you've learned over the years.

Specifically:

1) What is your preferred medium? Why? What software (if any) do you use?

2) How do you use any notes you retain?

3) What has worked for you and what has not?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this and sharing your thoughts!

  👤 manacit Accepted Answer ✓
I try to keep my process down to a minimum in general, otherwise I won't follow it, which defeats the purpose of it in the first place.

To that end, I:

Take notes in a shared Google Doc with the person that I'm meeting with. This creates less room for miscommunication, and creates a space where we can both leave async notes or topics for the next 1:1. This is largely the extend of the process I follow - I don't prescribe how verbose I am, the structure, etc. I just make sure the important stuff is written in that document.

I (personally) take notes in the moment in part to stay focused on the conversation and ensure that I'm communicating clearly. I don't pore over my notes after I've taken them, but find that the act of writing them helps me remember and internalize information that's been shared.

Beyond that, what _doesn't_ work, in my opinion, is adding a process-heavy workflow like creating an Issue/PR/Doc for every conversation, or doing anything that's not write it and forget it. Every time I have tried doing something more structured, it's resulted in the process not being followed.

I hope that's helpful, and happy to answer any more questions!

👤 ecesena
We use Lattice (https://lattice.com), I do weekly 1:1.

The thing I like is that as I come up with topics I add them to the agenda. During the meeting we go through the topics, check them out and possibly create followup tasks. Lattice auto-add the tasks to the agenda of the next meeting.

Before I was using a single GDoc/person, with and a list of bullet points. Pretty much doing the same thing as Lattice.