Jeff Su: Separate Meeting Decisions From Action Items

The Lesson

Your notes say, “We could run a workshop next month. Sam will check room availability.” An AI summary turns that into, “Sam will organize next month’s workshop.” It sounds tidy, but it converts a possibility into a commitment and expands Sam’s responsibility.

In his AI learning guide, Jeff Su recommends beginning with a work problem and using AI to assist a recurring task before connecting broader systems. His example pairs generated project recaps with his own quality check. His website identifies his teaching for working professionals. We can apply that narrow idea to meeting notes: the assistant prepares a brief; you check what the meeting actually supports.

Three useful categories are decisions, proposed ideas and assigned actions. A decision records an agreement. A proposal records something discussed but not settled. An action describes the next step someone agreed to take. These distinctions are part of this SelfGrowthVideos exercise, not a framework attributed to Su.

An action also needs a precise scope. Checking whether a room is available is different from booking it. A suggestion that someone might help is different from an assignment. If the notes do not give an owner or deadline, the brief should show that the information is missing.

Start with a fictional or appropriately shareable set of notes. Number the statements so you can trace the brief back to them. Ask the assistant to classify each item and include the supporting statement number. When a detail is unclear, ask it to mark the detail as unspecified and suggest a question for the next check-in.

Read the brief beside the notes. For each action, look for the words that establish who agreed to do what. For each decision, find the agreement. If a polished sentence goes beyond the source, reduce it to the supported statement or move it into a question.

This is useful even when you are preparing the brief by hand. The categories slow down a common mistake: treating every interesting discussion as a promise someone made.

For example, “We might move the workshop online” belongs under proposed ideas unless the notes record a decision. “Lee will compare two video platforms” can be an action. If no date was agreed, the deadline remains unspecified. A proposed follow-up question could be, “When should Lee report the comparison?” That question is not an answer you can fill in yourself.

Keep the review visible. An unchecked draft should not quietly become the official record. Before distributing a real brief, confirm unclear details through the meeting’s normal review process. The exercise below does not send messages, assign work or authorize an assistant to do either.

Reflection

• Which sentence in the notes supports each claimed decision?
• Has a possibility become a commitment?
• Does an action describe the agreed next step or a larger task?
• Which owner or deadline is genuinely unspecified?

Practice

Original SelfGrowthVideos exercise: classify and trace a meeting brief. This is our practice, not Jeff Su’s named method.

1. Use these fictional statements: “We may hold a beginner workshop.” “Sam will check room availability.” “We agreed to keep registration free.” “Lee could help with a poster.” “The group will discuss dates after Sam’s update.”
2. Number them. Make three headings: decisions, proposals and actions.
3. Ask an AI assistant to prepare a short brief using only those statements. Require supporting statement numbers and mark missing owners or deadlines as unspecified.
4. Check the result yourself. The workshop is proposed; free registration is an agreed decision; Sam’s task is to check availability.
5. Find any enlarged commitment. Lee’s possible help is not an assigned poster task. A future discussion does not establish a workshop date.
6. Add a fourth heading for questions needing confirmation. Write one question that would resolve a real gap.
7. Revise the brief until every asserted decision and action has support. Save both the notes and your reviewed version.

If you do not use an assistant, classify the statements yourself and apply the same checks.

Review

At the next check-in, revisit one question you marked as unresolved. If the group supplies an answer, update the brief and record which information changed.

Notice whether the revised record makes the next step clearer. Keep uncertain details visible until the people involved confirm them.

Go Deeper

• Jeff Su’s creator profile collects his original AI and productivity resources.
• AI Learning & Career Skills connects professional skills with practical learning.
• Prompt engineering helps specify a request and its limits.
• Sabrina Ramonov: review AI social copy against its source practices a related check for public-facing drafts.