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Effortless Networking: A Guide to Keeping Tabs on Your Interactions
My system on how I keep track of whom I meet and what we talked about.
My typical workday is packed with meetings and human interactions. Well-structured sessions should have the desired outcome and make it easy to derive tasks from them. My key learning is that you will need to be more structured in many conferences or run-ins with people. The result was that I had hazy memories of what we discussed and agreed on or sometimes just missed some critical details.
I tried different systems in the last 15 years, which all failed me. The obvious solution would be to have structured meeting notes for every interaction you have. I later refined that to have one structured note per day. Nevertheless, searching through the before-mentioned notes is painstaking when you need clarification on what you are looking for. Later, I tried to log everything in my task list. This system seemed the right approach since I had everything in one place. Unfortunately, many things I wrote were not actionable and should not have been on my task list.
After much trying and error, I found a better system that has now iterated over the past three years. Sharing my system with others, I was amazed to learn that most never thought of it, even though it seems obvious. I am sharing it with you, hoping it might improve your life.
I have one structured list, which I call “Follow-up”. Every time I have a first…