Minuting meetings

Taking minutes at meetings has me engaged in three different activities:

1. Listening to what people are saying.


2. Paraphrasing what they said, summarizing the important content.


3. Writing or typing the summary of that content.

I am surprised that people are generally happy with the minutes I take because those three activities feel to me to be sequential, especially it seems suboptimal to me that I am tuning people out to minute what I just heard. Perhaps in the back of their mind is the thought that if my minute-taking is inadequate then I am quite happy for them to do so instead.