AI Notetakers for ADHDers

Skepticism, Cursing, and then Nirvana

How I cursed myself out and adopted AI notetakers

A couple of months ago, I was meeting with my assistant, Liz, on a bunch of thorny topics. We went back and forth for 90 minutes including my going off on several ADHD tangents. At the end of the meeting, I wished Liz a good weekend, hung up, and then cursed up a blue streak because I had forgotten to summarize our takeaways. 

I had turned on an AI notetaker before the meeting just to experiment, so skeptically, I decided to check it out to see what came out of the meeting. At first I saw the transcript of the session and felt a little overwhelmed but then I saw a “To Do” tab and clicked on that. Here is what I saw:

The AI notetaker had listened to our whole 90-minute conversation and perfectly summarized the takeaways and if each To Do was assigned to Liz or me. Wow!

ADHDers love AI notetakers

My fellow ADHDers love AI notetakers. ADHDers typically get engaged in a meeting and completely forget to take notes. Or they take notes but can’t find them later. Or they hear a conversation and forget what the follow-up action items are. AI notetakers help with all these issues.

I resisted AI notetakers for a long time because I knew the act of taking notes for yourself is good for memory encoding. And I thought that AI notes tended to be too detailed for my needs. But AI notetakers continue to improve and now I am an evangelist for them. However, it’s critical for you to know how to use them in the best way possible.

Which AI notetaker is the best for people with ADHD?

I spent several weeks testing AI notetakers, including Zoom, Wispr Flow, Granola, and even hardware devices like Pocket and Fieldy. Looking at them through an ADHD lens, my #1 criterion was simple: Which one are people with ADHD most likely to actually use consistently?

Zoom

Zoom was the obvious place to start since many of my meetings happen there. It does a good job summarizing meetings, providing transcripts, and pulling out action items. But it doesn’t work seamlessly for meetings outside Zoom. That was a dealbreaker. Slack’s AI notetaker has the same limitation.

The Upshot: ★★★ Great for Zoomers

Granola

I tried Granola next because my wife raved about it. Once installed, it automatically recognized meetings on Zoom, Slack, and Google Meet and asked if I wanted notes. I also liked that it runs quietly in the background rather than joining meetings as a visible participant like Otter.ai. (I do love otters, but not otter.ai).

The basic version is free but limits your note history. The $14/month version adds unlimited history and workflow integrations.

The Upshot: ★★★★Great general purpose AI notetaker but you need to pay the subscription.

Wispr Flow

Wispr Flow has already been life-changing for me (halle-fing-lujah). I started using it for speech-to-text because my typing—especially on my phone—is mediocre. It works so much better than built-in dictation that I now use it for much of my writing.

Then I discovered its AI notetaker. It created excellent transcripts, summaries, and clearly organized “Next Steps.” And because Wispr Flow was already running on my MacBook, I didn’t need another memory-hogging app open in the background.

Here’s what the summary and “Next Steps looked like from a recent client session (anonymized). 

Wispr Flow is priced similarly to Granola, $15/month, but you get the speech-to-text tool too.

The Upshot: ★★★★ Particularly great if you are already using Wispr Flow for speech-to-text.

Pocket

Granola and Wispr Flow are great for online meetings, which are most of mine. But for in-person conversations — where a phone feels obtrusive, or you’d rather not announce that you’re recording — I bought Pocket: a $129 device about the size and thickness of a stack of cards.

I used it at brunch with a coaching friend recently instead of pulling out my phone (bonus: good conversation piece). One button to start it; notes were waiting on my phone and computer afterward.

It’s easy to use, but unlike Wispr Flow, it won’t prompt you — you have to remember to turn it on yourself.

The Upshot: ★★★ Great if a lot of your meetings are face-to-face and you don’t want to fish around on your phone to find an app.

Fieldy

Fieldy is similar to Pocket – it’s a $120 hardware device that captures, transcribes, and summarizes audio. It’s got a slick app interface that collects all your Tasks together so you don’t have to move them to a To Do List.

The big difference is that it’s designed to be an “always on” device that you wear as a necklace or around your neck as a phone.

It captures every conversation you have — meetings, chats with friends, your kids, your partner. Great if your working memory needs that much backup.

For me, it felt too Big Brotherish. My wife disagreed: “Every time you swear I never asked you to do something, I want a transcript to prove I did.” Which is exactly why I’m not using Fieldy.

The Upshot: ★★ Great if you want to capture every damn bit of audio in your life.

Genio

Genio is an AI notetaker/app that helps college students with focus issues. It has sold itself directly to college disability offices who make it available to students. It does the standard AI transcription and summarization but it also adds a couple of other features: 

• • It allows professors to upload their slides for a lecture so you can capture notes right next to the slides.
  • It allows you to annotate with your own notes which is good for keeping your brain engaged and helping you process new information.

The Upshot: ★★★★ Great for college students who need support.

The most important thing about AI Notetakers

Like many things AI, AI Notetakers come with their risks along with their benefits. The biggest risk of AI notetakers is that you will turn your brain off and let your AI notetaker do the work. 

• • Don’t Zone Out – If you are listening to a lecture, let your AI allow you to focus on the speaker and resist the temptation to zone out completely.
  • Reread Summary – If you are using it to summarize a meeting or talk, make sure you reread the summary right after the meeting or talk is finished.
  • Edit Follow-Ups – Make sure you read and edit the list of ToDos to make sure the AI got it right and then set some priorities.

In short, make sure that you use your brain to process the information that your notetaker caught. Don’t let your AI notetaker replace your brain. If you can do that, you will get all the convenience without losing the learning.