Eight Things You Can Do in a Meeting with a TabletPC

As I wrote this past weekend, my TabletPC has enabled me to become far more productive in meetings. This is critical since I spend so much time in meetings—usually 30 hours or so per week. The last two days have been particularly intense.

Once a month, we take two full days to review each of our company’s publishing divisions and market channels. For me this means (gulp) eighteen 45-minute meetings in a row!

In the past, I would leave these kinds of meetings with a pile of notes and a plethora of action items. I would then have to spend two evenings going back through my notes, entering the action items into Outlook (as tasks), and then personally following-up on or delegating each of them.

By contrast, I left the meeting today with my notes filed and all my work done. Man, does that feel great! Here’s are eight things I was able to do in the meeting as a result of having a TabletPC:

1. Take notes. I wrote directly on my PC screen in my own handwriting. No, I didn’t convert it into text, nor do I have any intention to do so. My handwriting contains many nuances that are impossible to convert to text. Besides, the software converts my handwriting in the background, making it fully searchable should I need to find something later.
   
   
2. Enter tasks. As tasks were assigned, I entered them directly into Outlook. I entered assignments to my staff as "@WaitingFor" tasks, following David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) model. I also entered tasks for myself into Outook, using the appropriate GTD category.
   
   
3. Ask questions via e-mail. Occasionally, questions came up that we couldn’t answer in the meeting. Instead of waiting for a break or scheduling a follow-up for later, I just sent an e-mail to the appropriate person in the company. (Fortunately, we have wireless networking throughout the building.) I usually had the answer a few minutes later.
   
   
4. Make assignments via e-mail. If I needed to make an assignment to someone not present in the meeting, I simply sent an e-mail. If it was important enough to track, I used the GTD add-in to “send and delegate” the task.
   
   
5. Look up information in computer files. Following Michael Linenberg’s recommendation in Seize the Work Day, I have put together a collection of “Power Documents.” These are the documents that I find myself referring to again and again. When I need to refer to one of these, I could get to it instantly. Via the TabletPC, the most up-to-date documents were at my fingertips. And, because I was running wireless, I also had access to any files on the entire network.
   
   
6. Look up information on the Web. A couple of times, I needed to look up information on a Web site. Again, I didn’t have to send someone out for the information or wait until a later time. It was instantly available. (I must also confess: I was able to check our company’s stock price through the day.)
   
   
7. Respond to urgent messages. Naturally, while I am stuck in meetings, life goes on. People are calling, e-mailing, and even dropping by to see me. Fortunately, I could periodically scan my inbox to see if there was something that was urgent. If so, I could discretely reply. Everyone else thought I was simply taking notes. ;-)
   
   
8. Keep my staff moving forward. In the past, work would often come to a stand still because my staff couldn’t get to me. I was locked up in meetings and until I came up for air, they were stuck. Not any more. Now they just e-mail me. I’m about to take this to the next level and have everyone start using MSN Messenger.

I’m sure there are other things you can do in meetings with a TabletPC. These are my top ones. If you have others, I’d love to here from you.