How to Zettelkast Meeting Notes (in Obsidian)— Vader, Bezos, and Socrates have a Meeting

You’ve taken some meeting minutes.

It’s a long document that specifies who said what and the decisions that were made. Your colleagues are satisfied, but your Zettelkasten soul is in agony— how do you transform this into permanent notes? And which notes do you bother with?

Answer: Store the meeting minutes in Obsidian, and create atomic notes for the important points.

General strategy

Here’s the overall procedure:

• Take the meeting minutes and put them in a note in Obsidian.
• Create separate notes for the important points you’d like refer to or build on later.
• Don’t overdo it — if the minutes are long, come back weeks or months later and create notes for the things you need to refer to.

Example of a Galactic Department meeting between Vader, Bezos, and Socrates

Let’s say you take the following meeting minutes.

Ministry of Evil — Galactic Department meeting minutes (Vader, Bezos, Socrates, July 2023)

Participants: Darth Vader (head of marketing), Jeff Bezos (head of baldness), Socrates (external consultant), me.

Date: a long long time ago.

Place: a galaxy far away.

Bezos proposes to conquer the galactic market by dumping the prices for Amazon services.

Vader thinks it’s too evil — even for a galactic empire.

Socrates questions what prices really are.

Decision: Amazon’s galactic dominion starts with Earth. If the limited trial succeeds, the galaxy is next.

You document the meeting minutes as a note in Obsidian. This way, the original minutes are always available and no information is lost.

You then use that as a source for further ideas and decisions.

You do this because, in the office, traceability is power.

• If someone ever deviates from the decision, you can undeniably prove that they’ve done so — and use that to annihilate them,
• Colleagues will be impressed how you organize your ideas,
• The important ideas and decisions are but a quick search away.

To build on the decision, you create an atomic note:

Amazon’s galactic dominion starts with Earth. If the limited trial succeeds, the galaxy is next (decision, July 2023, by Bezos, Vader, and Socrates)

In a Galactic Department department meeting in July 2023, Bezos, Vader, and Socrates made the decision that “Amazon’s galactic dominion starts with Earth. If the limited trial succeeds, the galaxy is next.”

>Reference

>>Decision: Amazon’s galactic dominion starts with Earth. If the limited trial succeeds, the galaxy is next.

>>Source: [[Ministry of Evil — Galactic Department meeting minutes (Vader, Bezos, Socrates, 2023)]]

You use it to strengthen the idea that Earth is key to Amazon’s success. Reading through the minutes again, you don’t find anything else worth Zettelkasting.

But, a month later, you want to build on the proposal that Bezos made in the meeting.

So, you create the following note:

Amazon should conquer the galactic market by dumping prices for Amazon services (Bezos, July 2023)

In a Galactic Department department meeting in July 2023, the head of baldness, Jeff Bezos, proposed that Amazon should conquer the galactic market by dumping prices for Amazon services (Bezos, July 2023).

>Reference

>>Bezos proposes to conquer the galactic market by dumping the prices for Amazon services.

>>Source: [[Ministry of Evil — Galactic Department meeting minutes (Vader, Bezos, Socrates, 2023)]]

Which you present to top management, suggesting it as the Empire’s key strategy. Not only do they think it’s a good idea, but you’re able to refer to Bezos, the time, and place the suggestion was made.

The Emperor is impressed, and promotes you to head of note-taking.