Be organized: During meetings, discussions can go wildly off topic until they are brought back to the agenda and a lot of different opinions are voiced when deciding to make a decision on whether to approve the new layout for a landing page. If you are taking notes, make sure you group all action items together, all pending issues next to each other, and so on. This will not only make for easy note-taking, but will help when creating meeting minutes or looking up what your own actions are.

Use shorthand and acronyms: Write (or type) fast by summarizing things, using abbreviations, and shortening words. You can later rephrase and expand when creating the minutes.

Draw, use symbols or illustrations: Using symbols such as empty squares for action items, exclamation points next to important decisions, and question marks for items to be...