# Turn messy meeting notes into clear next steps

Original 5HO practice material. Fictional example. Reviewed 5 October 2026.

## Useful result

You'll finish with a meeting follow-up that distinguishes agreed work from ideas and open questions.

Meeting notes tend to collect decisions, guesses and someone saying “we should probably”. Put those in separate places before they become a suspiciously confident action list.

## Set up

Allow 15–20 minutes. Use a text chat and the sample notes. A transcript is optional; you do not need a recording tool for this exercise.

## Practice input

Tuesday handover: Jo will check room availability by 8 October. Sam can draft the invitation after Jo confirms the room. Catering owner not chosen. We discussed 16 October for the event but did not confirm it.

## Do the task

1. Ask for an action table with task, owner, due date, status and source phrase.
2. Check each row against the original notes, especially the dependency on room confirmation.
3. Refine the table and keep unresolved choices in a separate questions list.

## Prompt

Extract actions from the notes into a table. Use Unknown for missing owners or dates. Keep proposals separate from decisions. Include the exact short source phrase supporting each row.

## Refine

Do not make Sam responsible for booking the room. Keep the event date proposed and put the catering owner in the questions list.

## Expected checks

Jo has a room-check task due 8 October. Sam’s invitation task depends on confirmation. The table must not claim the room is booked or the event date agreed.

## Save

Save meeting-actions.csv or a copied table, plus the original notes. Bring the open questions to your next check-in.

## Sources

- Writing clear prompts: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10032626-prompt-engineering-best-practices-for-chatgpt