Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. We are coming to you from our home in Jerusalem, and I have to say, the energy in the house has been a bit different lately. It is early February, the air outside is that specific kind of Jerusalem cold—crisp and a little dusty—and inside, there is just a lot of focused, quiet work happening in the various corners of the living room.
That is very true. I think we are all in a bit of a deep-work phase. I am Herman Poppleberry, by the way, for anyone who is just joining us for the first time or perhaps forgot my somewhat elaborate surname. It is Monday, February second, twenty twenty-six, and while the rest of the city is buzzing about the state budget votes and the news about the Rafah crossing reopening, we are tucked away in our own little world of documentation.
It is a hard name to forget, Herman. But you are right about the focused energy. Our housemate Daniel has been really leaning into his documentation game lately. He actually sent us an audio prompt about his new workflow. He has been recording important conversations—which, as we know, is perfectly legal here in Israel under the one-party consent rules—and then using Gemini three point zero for transcription and summaries. But the real kicker is what he does next: he follows it up with what he calls contemporaneous notes.
It is a fascinating system. He is really trying to solve that age-old problem of the fading memory. You know the feeling, Corn. You walk out of a meeting with a landlord or a municipal official feeling like you understood every single point, and then forty-eight hours later, you are looking at your notes wondering what on earth a specific acronym meant or why you underlined the word Arnona three times with a question mark.
Exactly. And Daniel mentioned something really specific to his situation here. Even though his Hebrew is quite good for daily life, when you are dealing with government bodies or the Va'ad Bayit—the house committee—the vocabulary gets very technical very quickly. You are talking about things like mold spores, building codes, and legal tenancies. Being at a linguistic disadvantage makes the need for perfect recall even higher. If you miss a nuance in a conversation about a lease, it can cost you thousands of shekels down the line.
I love that he is using the term contemporaneous notes. It sounds very official, almost like something out of a courtroom drama. But the reality is that it is one of the most powerful tools for anyone in a high-stakes environment. I have actually been looking into the research on this recently, specifically how our brains encode information during stressful or complex interactions. There is a massive difference between what we think we remember and what actually happened.
Well, that is what we are digging into today. Daniel wanted to know the best practices for mastering this art form. Is there a standard format? What details should be included? What should be avoided? I think we should start with the why, Herman. Why go through the trouble of making these notes immediately after a meeting if you already have a high-fidelity recording or a PhD-level AI summary from Gemini?
That is the perfect place to start. Most people think a transcript is the ultimate record. But a transcript is just a list of words. It lacks what psychologists call the meta-data of the interaction. It does not capture the tone, the body language, the pauses, or the feeling in the room. If a government official says, we will see what we can do, with a wink and a smile, the transcript just says, we will see what we can do. Those are two very different outcomes. One is a promise; the other is a polite dismissal.
Right, and if you wait two days to write that down, you might remember the words, but you will almost certainly lose the nuance of the wink. There is this concept we have talked about before, the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. Recent studies in twenty twenty-five actually reinforced just how brutal this curve is. It suggests that humans lose about fifty to eighty percent of new information within twenty-four hours if they do not actively reinforce it. By the end of a week, you are lucky if you retain twenty-five percent.
Precisely. The contemporaneous part of the note-taking is what fights that curve. It is a form of active output that beats passive input every time. In legal terms, these notes are often given more weight because they were created while the memory was fresh, or as they say in Latin, res gestae, things done. It reduces the chance of what we call post-hoc rationalization, where your brain starts filling in the gaps of your memory with what you wish had happened or what you think should have happened to make yourself look better.
So, if we are looking at a standard format for these notes, where do we begin? If I am sitting down with a coffee right after a meeting at a cafe on Jaffa Street, what is the first thing I should be putting at the top of my page?
I think we should break this down into a skeleton that anyone can use. The first section should always be the administrative metadata. This is the stuff that feels boring but is vital for organization. You want the date, the exact start and end times, the location, and a full list of participants. And when I say participants, I mean their full names and their roles. Six months from now, you will not remember who the person named Avi was, but you will remember Avi, the head of the water department.
That is a great point. And maybe even a quick note on the environment. Was it a noisy cafe? Was it a formal office? That kind of detail helps anchor the memory when you read it later. It gives your brain a physical space to return to. I find that if I record that it was raining outside or that the air conditioner was humming loudly, the rest of the conversation comes back to me much more vividly.
Absolutely. The next section, and this is where it gets more substantive, is what I call the objective summary. This is the sequence of events. First we discussed the lease, then we moved to the repair schedule, then we talked about the payment terms. You are not trying to capture every word—that is what the recording is for. You are capturing the milestones of the conversation. Think of it as a table of contents for the meeting.
This is where I think Daniel’s use of Gemini is really clever. He can get that objective summary from the AI. But here is my question for you, Herman. If the AI gives you a summary, does that replace the need for the human to write their own objective summary? We are in twenty twenty-six, and Gemini three point zero is incredibly good at reasoning.
I would argue no, at least not entirely. The act of writing it yourself forces you to process the information. It is a biological reinforcement. However, the best practice now is to use the AI summary as a baseline and then annotate it. You might say, the AI summary is accurate, but it missed the fact that the landlord seemed very hesitant when we discussed the January deadline. That is the human layer that the AI often misses, even with the advanced multimodal reasoning we have today.
I like that. So, we have the metadata and the objective summary. What comes next in the skeleton?
The third section is the most critical for contemporaneous notes, and it is the part most people skip. It is the subjective observations. This is where you record the non-verbal cues. Did the person seem nervous? Were they avoiding eye contact? Did they seem genuinely helpful or were they just trying to get you off the phone? This is also where you record your own state of mind. If you were feeling frustrated or overwhelmed by the technical Hebrew, write that down. It helps you account for your own biases when you review the notes later.
That is fascinating. Recording your own emotional state as a way to calibrate the accuracy of the record. That is a very high-level move. It reminds me of how scientists have to record the calibration of their instruments before an experiment. If the instrument is off by two degrees, the data needs to be adjusted.
Exactly. If you know you were angry, you can look back and say, okay, I might have interpreted their tone as more aggressive than it actually was. It adds a layer of intellectual honesty to the process. In psychology, we call this meta-cognition—thinking about your own thinking. It is what separates a professional record from a simple diary entry.
Okay, so we have metadata, objective summary, and subjective observations. What about the specifics? Daniel asked about what details to include or avoid. Are there certain things that are always worth noting, especially in a bureaucratic or legal context?
Yes. Always include specific numbers, dates, and deadlines. If someone says, we will get back to you in a few days, try to pin them down to a specific date in the moment. If you cannot, note that they were vague. Also, use direct quotes for the most important points. If they make a promise, try to write down their exact phrasing. There is a big difference between saying, I will fix it, and saying, I will look into fixing it. One is a commitment; the other is a possibility.
The language of commitment. That is huge. And I suppose we should also talk about what to avoid. You do not want these notes to become a rambling narrative, right? We are not writing a novel here.
Right. Avoid long-winded descriptions of irrelevant things. You do not need to describe what the person was wearing unless it is somehow relevant to their identity or role. Avoid venting. Even if you are frustrated, keep the subjective notes descriptive rather than judgmental. Instead of writing, the clerk was a jerk, write, the clerk was dismissive and interrupted me three times. One is a judgment, the other is an observation of behavior. The observation is much more useful if you ever have to use these notes in a formal setting like a mediation.
That is a very important distinction. Observations of behavior are evidence; judgments are just opinions. Now, let’s talk about the workflow. Daniel is recording, transcribing with Gemini, and then writing these notes. When is the absolute best time to do this? He mentioned doing it immediately after, but is there a window?
I call it the Golden Hour. Ideally, you want to do it within sixty minutes of the interaction ending. Every hour that passes after that, the fidelity of your memory drops significantly. If you can do it while sitting in your car or at a nearby cafe, that is perfect. If you have to wait until the end of the day, you have already lost the fine-grained detail. Your brain has already started the process of synaptic pruning—deciding what is worth keeping and what is noise.
And what about the medium? Does it matter if it is a digital note, a physical notebook, or even another voice memo? We have seen a big resurgence in e-ink tablets like the Remarkable or the Supernote lately. Do those count?
In the eyes of the law, the medium matters less than the timing and the integrity of the record. However, for personal mastery, I think a digital format that is searchable is superior. If Daniel is already using Gemini, he should probably keep his contemporaneous notes in the same ecosystem. He could have a folder for each case or project, with the recording, the transcript, the AI summary, and his own human notes all linked together. In twenty twenty-six, we have these agentic workflows where the AI can actually look across all those files and find contradictions for you.
I actually want to push back on the digital-only approach for a second. There is still some research suggesting that handwriting notes leads to better conceptual understanding and memory retention than typing. Do you think there is a case for Daniel to carry a small physical notebook for that first immediate download, and then digitize it later?
That is a great point, Corn. The tactile nature of handwriting does slow the brain down and force a different kind of processing. If Daniel finds that he is more present and thoughtful with a pen, then absolutely, start there. He can always snap a photo of the page and upload it to his digital system—Gemini three point zero is incredible at optical character recognition, even for messy handwriting. The key is the immediacy. If typing is faster and allows him to get more down while the memory is fresh, that might be the better trade-off for him. It really depends on his personal cognitive style.
Let’s talk about the role of the AI in this a bit more. When Daniel runs his recording through Gemini, he is getting a very high-quality transcript. Could he use a specific prompt to help him structure his contemporaneous notes? Like, asking the AI to highlight potential gaps in his own memory?
Oh, absolutely. That is where the synergy really happens. He could take his own rough notes, his transcript, and the AI summary, and then ask Gemini something like: Based on the transcript, are there any commitments made by the other party that I failed to mention in my personal notes? Or, highlight any points where the tone of the conversation seemed to shift according to the audio analysis. Gemini three point zero has a thinking level parameter now where you can set it to high reasoning to really dig into those nuances.
That is brilliant. Using the AI as a proofreader for your own memory. It is like having a second witness to the meeting who has a perfect, if literal, memory. But I suppose we should also talk about the social side of this. Recording people can be awkward. How do you handle the friction of being the person who is always documenting everything?
It is a delicate balance. In Israel, you do not have to tell the other person you are recording if you are part of the conversation. But for the note-taking, I often find that being open about it actually helps. You can say, I want to make sure I get all these technical details right, so I am going to take some notes. It shows that you are taking the interaction seriously. It can actually make the other person more precise and careful with their words, which is usually what you want in a high-stakes situation.
That makes sense. It sets a professional tone. Now, to summarize the format for Daniel and for our listeners: metadata at the top, a chronological objective summary of what was said, a section for subjective observations of tone and body language, a list of specific commitments and deadlines, and finally, a brief reflection on your own state of mind. Does that cover the essentials?
It does. And I would add one more small section at the very end: next steps. What do you need to do as a result of this meeting? Do not wait to put those in your calendar or your task manager. Put them in the note first so the context of why you are doing them is preserved. It turns the note from a passive record into an active tool for project management.
I think we should also touch on the legal side again. We are not lawyers, obviously, and we should be clear that this is not legal advice. But in your research, Herman, how do these kinds of notes actually hold up in situations like a landlord-tenant dispute here in Jerusalem?
From what I have read, they are incredibly persuasive in the Israeli court system. If you can show a consistent habit of taking contemporaneous notes, it builds your credibility as a witness. If you have a note from three months ago that says, on Tuesday at ten fifteen, the landlord promised to fix the leak by Friday, and the landlord says, I never said that, the person with the detailed, dated note is almost always going to be believed over the person relying on a vague memory. It shows a level of diligence that judges and mediators respect.
It is about the weight of evidence. A single note might be dismissed, but a pattern of documentation is hard to ignore. It is like building a wall, one brick at a time. And in a city like Jerusalem, where things can get complicated with property rights and municipal regulations, having those bricks in place is vital.
Exactly. And Daniel’s point about the recording is also a huge factor. Since he can legally record, his notes are essentially an annotated guide to the audio. If there is ever a dispute, he can say, in my notes I recorded that the official sounded hesitant at the twelve-minute mark, let’s listen to the tape. It makes the evidence much more accessible. You are not just handing over a two-hour audio file; you are handing over a map of that file.
It is interesting how technology is changing the nature of memory. We used to rely on our brains, then on written journals, and now we have this hybrid system of audio, AI, and human reflection. It feels like we are becoming bionic in our ability to remember. We are offloading the storage to the cloud but keeping the interpretation in our own heads.
It really does. But there is a danger there too, right? If we rely too much on the recording, we might stop paying attention during the actual meeting. We might think, oh, I will just listen to it later. That is a trap. The contemporaneous note-taking forces you to stay engaged. You are not just a passive listener; you are an active observer. It keeps you sharp.
That is a great point. The note-taking is a discipline that keeps you sharp in the moment. It is not just about the record you create; it is about the person you become while creating it. You become more analytical and more precise. It is a form of mindfulness, in a way. You are fully present because you know you have to account for it afterwards.
I love that. It is professional mindfulness. And for someone like Daniel, who is navigating a complex situation in a second language, it is a survival skill. It levels the playing field. It takes the linguistic disadvantage and turns it into a documentation advantage. I bet he has better records than the people he is dealing with at the government offices.
I would put money on that. He is very thorough. So, what are some common pitfalls? If someone is starting this practice today, what is the one thing that usually trips them up?
Honestly? Consistency. People do it for the big meetings, the scary ones, but they skip the quick phone calls or the informal chats in the hallway. But often, it is those informal moments where the real commitments are made. The best practitioners of this make it a habit for every professional interaction, no matter how small. It does not have to be a novel every time. For a two-minute phone call, your note might just be three sentences: Called the municipality at two PM. Spoke to Sarah. She confirmed the permit is under review. That takes thirty seconds to write, but it is a permanent record.
Okay, I can see that. It is about the minimum viable note. You do not need the full skeleton for every interaction, but you need the core facts. This has been a really enlightening dive into something that seems simple on the surface but has so much depth. I am actually going to start doing this more myself. I have a few projects where the details are starting to get a bit fuzzy, and I think a more disciplined note-taking habit would help.
I am glad to hear it. I have been doing it for my research for years, and I can tell you, looking back at a note from three years ago and being able to see exactly what I was thinking and feeling in that moment is a very cool experience. It is like a time machine for your own brain.
A time machine for your brain. I like that. Alright, I think we have covered a lot of ground today. Daniel, thanks for the prompt. It really got us thinking about the intersection of technology and human memory in twenty twenty-six.
Yes, thank you, Daniel. And if any of our listeners have their own systems for staying organized or using AI to augment their memory, we would love to hear about them. You can always reach out through the contact form at myweirdprompts dot com.
And if you are finding these discussions helpful, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It genuinely helps other people find the show, and we love reading your feedback. We have been doing this for over four hundred episodes now, and the community that has grown around the show is just fantastic.
It really is. If you want to dive deeper into our archive, you can find all four hundred and thirteen episodes at myweirdprompts dot com. There is a searchable index there if you are looking for specific topics, from emergent behaviors in AI to the history of bread making.
Bread making and AI. That is a good summary of our range, Herman. Alright, everyone. Thanks for listening to My Weird Prompts. We will be back next week with another exploration of the strange and fascinating world we live in.
Until then, keep those prompts coming. This has been My Weird Prompts.
Take care, everyone. Stay curious.
And take your notes while they are fresh!
Goodbye for now.
Bye everyone.
