Day 8: The follow-up email template I'm using after every meeting

Hey Indie Hackers,

Day 8 of building MeetDone.

Not a feature update today.

One thing became clearer this week:

the hard part of follow-up emails is not writing.

It's deciding what actually matters from messy meeting notes.

I used to think the prompt was the main problem.

It isn't.

Structure matters more than prompt.

Most notes are a mix of context, side comments, and half-decisions.

The useful part is usually just 4 things:

- what was decided

- what needs to happen

- who owns it

- when it should happen

So I started using the same simple format every time:

1. One-line recap

"We aligned on X and the next step is Y."

2. Decisions

- Decision 1

- Decision 2

3. Action items

- [Owner] -> [task] by [date]

- [Owner] -> [task] by [date]

4. Next checkpoint

"We'll review progress on [date]."

A few things this fixed immediately:

- less blank-page staring

- less tone tweaking

- less rereading notes

- much easier for the other side to skim

The biggest mistake I used to make was turning follow-ups into mini essays.

Most people do not need an essay.

They need clarity.

And one rule now feels obvious:

if there is no owner and no date, it's not a next step.

It's just a hope.

You don't need my product to test this.

Try the structure manually after your next 5 meetings and see if it cuts your follow-up time.

If you send a lot of follow-ups, what slows you down most right now?

- extracting the decisions

- writing the email

- making action items clear

P.S. I'm building MeetDone around exactly this format: notes/transcript in -> follow-up email out in about 30 seconds.