Stop Losing Decisions in Meeting Chaos (Simple AI Fix)

🧭 THIS WEEK AT AI SECOND ACT

Howdy, this week, the topic is meetings. How can AI help and reduce the time/effort involved in meetings and associated follow up.

Plus, something new —> a mega prompt to target companies for a job search. Looking for a new job is typically done backwards. Use this prompt to find companies you might like to work for first and then look for jobs within those companies. There is some great secret sauce in here to narrow the field, so hope you like it!

If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please share it! Forward this to a friend/colleague and have them subscribe at aisecondact.com/subscribe. Thanks!

👉 You can also just hit "Reply" and let me know what you want more (or less) of. Hopefully this week I didn’t screw up the poll like last week, so please use the poll to give feedback.

My goal is to make this as valuable and practical as possible as we navigate the new AI era. 🚀

🧰 AI NEWS + LEARNING

Here’s a few things I found recently:

• In case you missed it, definitely check out a previous edition here on prompt engineering complete with 20-prompt pack!

• OpenAI introduced HealthBench - If there’s one industry that needs a massive boot, it’s this one so let’s hope AI adds huge benefits!

• Andreessen Horowitz has a top 100 Generative AI apps list - it’s a good way of seeing the AI app landscape

  • Poe - aggregator of different chatbot tools, ChatGPT, Claude etc.

  • Sora - incredible image generator by OpenAI

  • Otter.ai - meeting agent - $100m ARR! Guess i should have thought of that :(.

• PMOtto - Project Management specific, tailored GPT

🗺️ FEATURED INSIGHT

Back to back meetings and by early afternoon, you couldn't remember what we'd actually decided.

You know that feeling.

Here's the thing: most of us are spending half our week in meetings and walking away with nothing useful or that moves the needle. Below is some ways AI can help.

🧰 Why Meetings Suck

Let's be honest about what's broken:

Your calendar is packed with meetings. You're trying to listen, take notes, and contribute all at once. All mixed with liberal use of corporate BS bingo. It can be exhausting, particularly then figuring out what to take action on and what was just ‘meeting fluff’.

Super secret —> ~ 70% of a typical meeting is fluff/BS bingo/noise that does not need to be followed up on!

🗺️ Non AI Guidelines

First, some pointers:

• Like the brilliant email advice of delete/archive/delete/delete, for meetings it’s —> decline, decline, tentative!

  • Do you need to be at that meeting and why?

  • Make sure your day/week has healthy amount of no meeting time

• When inviting, invite minimum possible participants and separate out ‘required’ or ‘optional’.

• Do not send action items in meeting minutes - they’re lost in the ether - move to action tracking tool instead.

🗺️ A Simple AI Meeting Workflow

Before the meeting (2 minutes)

Paste your agenda into ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever AI you can access at work.

Ask: "What should I focus on in this meeting?"

That's it. You'll walk in with clearer priorities instead of just reacting to whoever talks loudest or most.

During the meeting

Stop trying to be the perfect note-taker. Just listen.

If your company uses Teams, turn on transcription. If you use Zoom, same thing. If you're stuck with nothing, just record a voice memo on your phone.

The goal is capturing the conversation somehow, not writing beautiful notes.

After the meeting (5 minutes)

Take whatever transcript or recording you have. Feed it to your AI tool.

Three simple prompts:

1. "What decisions were made and who's doing what?"

2. "What could go wrong with these decisions?"

3. "Write a short email summary I can send to the team."

Finally, immediately add the actions to your action tracking tool. We can get into how to do this better in future.

Done. You'll have a proper follow-up ready before people get back to their desks. If you really ‘had to’ write notes, just make sure AI helps you minimize what you actually distribute.

🛠️ What Tools Actually Work

If you work somewhere with decent IT:

Microsoft Copilot is probably your best bet. It's already approved, works with Teams, and does the job.

If your company is more flexible:

Otter.ai transcribes better than anything else. About $20 a month.

If your IT department is paranoid:

Use whatever transcription you can get (even Teams' basic one). Copy and paste it into ChatGPT or Claude or Copilot afterward.

The quality doesn't have to be perfect. AI can work with messy transcripts.

🚀 Some Advanced Tricks

Once you're comfortable with the basics:

Monthly meeting audit: Upload a bunch of transcripts and ask your AI what patterns it sees. You'll spot which meetings are actually useful and which are just habit.

Communication mapping: After complex meetings, ask AI who needs to know what. It's better than you at figuring out the right level of detail for different people.

Meeting ROI check: Occasionally ask if a meeting was worth the time investment. AI will give you an honest answer when your brain won't.

📈 What You Actually Get

Time savings: You'll prep faster, follow up better, and stop losing decisions in the chaos.

Maybe 2-3 hours back per week if you're meeting-heavy.

🎯 How to Start

This week: Pick one meeting and try the workflow.

Next week: If it helped, use it for all your important meetings.

👉 Hit “Reply” and share your experience — I read every one!

_{Picture by Benjamin Child on Unsplash.}