Agreed, icons is the way to go here for meeting note-taking. I use a box for things I want to make sure get covered during the meeting, and I check it off after I bring it up or someone else does. And I use a triangle next to a box for things I want to follow up with someone privately or ask about off line after the meeting.

And the very important star for things I don’t want to forget or that are important.

Most people just interrupt because they are afraid they’ll forget and must bring up their very important point right now.

I also sometimes make a diagram showing the seating arrangement of everyone in the meeting so I can know who was present and refer to them by name if I’m unfamiliar with them.

Another note taking trick I use is to use circled numbers to refer to things elsewhere on this page or other pages.

Most important of all is that I never use a notebook with rippable paper; these notebooks are important documents I keep with me forever. Every page gets a page number and the date at the top. I reserve the first page of each notebook for a table of contents. Whenever something happens that I might need to refer to later I put it and its page number in the table of contents. Many table of contents entries end up with many page numbers after them, such as pages with T-shirt ideas, game ideas, and haikus. Because of this system I can say “see #3 on 2016-05-24” and go right to something I noted years ago. I go through about one notebook per year and have them going back a long time.

Whether you are aware and just didn't mention it, or are not aware that you have essentially recreated the bullet journal (see: a search engine), might as well go all the way and get a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook for the new year. It has page numbers and a table of contents pre-printed for you. $20, but for something that pretty much lasts the whole year, not overly expensive.

It actually sounds a lot like what I do, which is a close cousin to the good old-fashioned scientific notebook. This is a neat read that I just found searching:

https://www.training.nih.gov/assets/Lab_Notebook_508_(new).p...

Understood! My system started with franklin covey from back in the day, but I need graph paper for my notes for various reasons.

My system is much like yours in terms of notebook organization- I use it like a daily diary with TOC and all. I use graph-ruled composition notebooks.

My note-taking format is actually a simpler version of bulletjournal.

Bulletjournal is a bit heavy weight. But maybe BulletJournal is meant to be an example what you can personalize to meet your own preference.