Hi,
It’s been close to a year that I’m working in Japan, great work culture, nice salary everything but there is one thing that I’m really struggling with.
It’s taking notes during meetings.
I’m working in a fully japanese environment, and although I’m not a beginner, I’m also not a native who can write notes at the speed of talking.
I have tried to write with kana or romaji but it’s still very hard and takes a long time. I listen to records of the meeting but it’s really time consuming.
In alphabet I use a lot of contraction, for example with become w/, or the “tion” ending becomes ° so like preemption becomes preemp°.
I wonder if you have any good practice for taking not efficiently ?
Edit : hand writing
15 comments
Use the CLOVA Note app. It’s purpose is to record + text to speech entire meetings, including separating speakers by their voice etc.
Sorry can’t recommend anything using dead trees method.
I take notes in English on my iPad during meetings. It doesn’t matter because my notes are for my reference.
I would record and transcribe later, I even do this for meetings in my native language if I’m expected to take notes.
During the faculty, a long time ago, I had created some sort of “dictionary” with easy signs for the words that were repeated the most. I don’t know if that is a good idea, but it worked for me.
When I find that I have to take notes, I do so in English. Tried to do it in my native language (German), but that doesn’t quite work for me. Switching between Japanese and English comes more natural to me somehow.
The common language in my company is Japanese. I typically write the meeting notes in English and then take some time when the meeting is order to summarize them all in Japanese. Often the note taker has to produce 議事録 anyway, so it doesn’t take that much extra time and it gives me a chance to think through what happened at the meeting, determine action points, etc. Afterwards I share the Japanese summary with my colleagues and, because I work as a manager, my boss.
Wait a little while and you can get AI to do it. Even now the capability exists to transliterate and then translate and note take. It’s just not feasible due to the compute required locally. Give it a year or two and note taking will be a thing of the past.
What kind of archaic work place makes you use things like pen and paper? You copy your work using a gutenberg press too? Perhaps try leveling up the productivity in the company by introducing this new thing called computers?
Bad habit (maybe) I gained in primary school and college — Don’t take notes and just listen and memorize.
I can’t take quality notes to save my life.
One tip I learned from interpreting note taking class is cutting out vowels/not writing out an entire word. As long as you can read it I mean. Basically the sooner you can workout your own shorthand/symbols (like you did with the O) the faster you’ll get. So it might just take time and consistency until you can become faster at it
I kind of made my own shorthand since in most cases my notes are just for my own personal use. Anything that’s an increase or an improvement becomes an upward arrow, decrease/worsening becomes a downward arrow, words like business become biz, etc. I also just scribble everything down in hiragana unless it’s simple kanji that I can write quickly, but katakana words I usually just write down in cursive English to save time.
That said, for notes that I have to share with others I would try to record it if possible.
Just recording verbatim everything said in the meeting is an unproductive approach and unless you’re asked to do that there’s also no need to do it.
Every meeting has an agenda and some key points. Write down the agenda; write down key points and the conclusions for every item.
I hope it helps.
“great work culture”
where?
I just ask my boss what job is most crucial to finish and if there is anything I can do to help out. Usually works for me because when I get into meetings, they’re all in Japanese. I just smile,nod, and pretend I know. I only have N3 so my Japanese isn’t great.
Might be stupid but have you tried alphabetizing them? I also take my notes in English (not my native language because translating to Indonesian is harder) but when there are Japanese words that I can’t translate immediately in my head I just write then words down but in alphabet letters. So for example I just write in my notes, “need to make mitsumori (見積もり) tomorrow and send to gyoshasan (業者さん)。 It doesn’t need to be accurate as long as you understand it.