Everyday work · Practical guide

Turn messy meeting notes into clear next steps

Beginner · Published 2026-10-05 · Reviewed 2026-10-05

Tools: Gemini
Audience: People getting started with AI
Topic: Everyday work

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.

Download this guide’s practice sheet ↓

Try this example

FICTIONAL PRACTICE MATERIAL
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

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

Your reusable 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.

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.

Refine your result

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

Check the result

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 and reuse

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

Sources and notes

Writing clear prompts Checked 2026-10-05

The practice input and teaching prompt are original 5HO material. Examples are fictional; they are not screenshots or claims of a completed real-world task.
Official documentation supports the relevant product concepts. Setup availability depends on your account; where a guide offers a fallback, it does not prove the connected capability worked.