There are simple things you can do to make a difference in your work. Maybe this sounds familiar to you.
You have a work meeting with 2-x other people. You discuss a topic and agree on how to proceed. At the moment there is no need to take action because there is no urgency. Two weeks things change. The topic that was not so important is now more critical. You have to act. The same people meet again. First question of the meeting (the second one). “What did we agree on last time?”
It is quite likely that none of the participants have a concrete answer. Our memory fails us, that is the problem.
The solution is very simple
Yet according to my observations in a professional environment hardly anyone does it. And it is this: take notes during a meeting.
I have realized that when I am able to phone number library search through my notes saved in Word format and take out the essential points, I add a lot of value to the group. The effort to add that value has been minimal. In fact, I usually take notes during work. I don’t have a bigger time commitment than the rest of the people.
Right now within the company we are going to take this to the next level
We write down the notes for the meetings in Confluence. That way everyone has access to them. It is also important to have a “bore” like me who do this little thing to level up at work reminds everyone to take notes of important things. We have a lot of room for improvement but we are working on it. That is the most important thing.
On going faster
It was obvious that they were impatient. They had already material data had success with the company they had set up but they wanted to go even faster. In the end it’s not one big thing you do but the sum of small things. You have to be disciplined but doing the right things and that’s not so easy to detect or know, especially in the beginning. I’ve already made that mistake of betting in a hyper-disciplined way on a project that wasn’t the right one. The advice is the one that no one in their early 20s likes. “Patience, everything will come.