How to take notes in a one-on-one with your manager

A weekly or fortnightly one-on-one with your manager is the most valuable recurring meeting most people have. It is where feedback happens, priorities get set, and promotion cases quietly take shape. It is also the meeting people most often walk out of with nothing written down, because it feels informal.

A few minutes of notes per meeting turn one-on-ones into a record you can use at review time and a list of commitments you actually keep.

Before: a running agenda

Keep one running list for each one-on-one. During the week, whenever something comes up you want to raise, capture it straight away: “Ask about the Leeds project timeline #1on1”. By the meeting, your agenda has written itself.

Good things to collect:

• Decisions you need from your manager.
• Blockers you cannot clear yourself.
• Wins worth mentioning (they forget).
• Questions about priorities or feedback.
• Career topics, at least monthly.

During: three kinds of line

Do not transcribe. Write short lines of three kinds:

• Decided: “Leeds go-live moves to January.”
• Actions: “Me: draft proposal by Fri.” “Manager: intro me to Ana.”
• Feedback: anything about your work, in their words where possible.

Feedback is the one people most often fail to write down and most regret losing. Exact phrasing matters when you look back months later.

After: two minutes

• Turn your actions into tasks with dates.
• Put your manager’s actions on a “waiting for” list so you can follow up kindly. See how to stop forgetting follow-ups after meetings.
• Optionally send a short recap: “Thanks - I’ll send the proposal Friday, and you’ll intro me to Ana.” It confirms understanding and creates a gentle record.

Keep a running document

One document (or one tag) for all one-on-ones with the same person, newest at the top. Over months it becomes:

• Evidence for your self-review.
• A record of feedback and how you acted on it.
• A history of decisions, useful when priorities shift and nobody remembers why.

Keep it private where appropriate

Your notes about your own one-on-ones are yours. Some content - feedback, concerns, career discussions - is not for a shared team space. Keep it somewhere you control. Jot stores captures locally on your PC, with nothing sent to a server unless you use a feature that does.

Managers: same habits, reversed

If you are the manager, the same three kinds of line work. Writing down what you promised your report, and following through, is the single strongest signal that one-on-ones matter. Guidance from management resources such as Lara Hogan’s writing on one-on-ones is a good starting point for the conversation itself.

A capture habit that makes it easy

The agenda is the part that benefits most from fast capture, because ideas for the one-on-one arrive in the middle of other work. A global shortcut and a tag is enough: in Jot, Ctrl + Shift + J, “ask about Leeds timeline #1on1”, Ctrl + Enter. Before the meeting, search the tag. See how to use tags without making a mess.

Jot is on the Microsoft Store.

Jot is a quick-capture app for Windows: one hotkey, one line, back to what you were doing. What it is, or what is still unproven.