Keep taking personal notes alongside AI transcription…
When using AI meeting transcription, continue taking personal compressed notes during the conversation rather than relying solely on transcripts—then review AI summary against your notes afterward to identify gaps and improve real-time capture calibration.
When This Fires
- Using AI meeting transcription tools (Otter, Fireflies, Zoom AI summary)
- Attending meetings where AI is recording and you're tempted to stop taking notes
- Reviewing AI meeting summaries and wanting to improve their usefulness
- Any meeting context where AI transcription is available
Common Failure Mode
Stopping personal note-taking entirely because "the AI gets everything." Then receiving the transcript afterward and skimming it — absorbing almost nothing because the processing that note-taking provides didn't happen during the meeting. The transcript becomes an archive nobody reads rather than a tool that improves understanding.
The Protocol
During AI-transcribed meetings: (1) Take compressed personal notes — not verbatim, but your interpretation: what matters, what surprised you, what decisions were made, what's unresolved. (2) After the meeting, review the AI summary side by side with your notes. (3) What did the AI capture that you missed? → Your filter was too narrow in that moment. (4) What did your notes capture that the AI missed? → Your human judgment added irreplaceable value. (5) Merge the best of both into your final meeting notes. Over time, the comparison calibrates your real-time capture skill.