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Happy Tuesday everybody!
Quick question.
How much of your last meeting or lecture do you actually remember?
Not the slides. The stuff people said out loud. The "this will probably come up in the exam" stuff, or the "can you have that done by Friday?" stuff.
If you're like most people, you were trying to listen and write at the same time.
Which means you did both a bit badly.
So this week is three free tools that work as one little system:
One that takes the notes for you
One that turns those notes into revision
One that turns them into slides in about a minute
Let's go.
1. Wispr Flow
Talk instead of type. Now it takes your notes too.
Hold a key, talk, and it types into any app: email, Slack, Docs, ChatGPT. It strips out the "umms" and tidies the rambling, so it reads like you typed it properly.
About 4× faster than typing
Works in 100+ languages
Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android
The new bit: a notetaker. Open it during any call, meeting or lecture and you get a transcript with real names, a summary and the next steps. No bot joins the call.
Students: you actually get to listen in lectures, and the notes still happen.
My favourite part: it plugs into ChatGPT and Claude, so you can ask "what did we agree on the budget?" and get the answer from your actual notes.
And ask it out loud. You'll explain way more than you'd ever bother typing, and get a much better answer back. That's exactly what their ad is about 👇
Your AI prompts are leaving out 80% of what you're thinking.
When you type a prompt, you summarize. When you speak one, you explain. Wispr Flow captures your full reasoning (constraints, edge cases, examples, tone) and turns it into clean, structured text you paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool. The difference shows up immediately. More context in, fewer follow-ups out.
Used by teams at Microsoft, Amazon, and Notion. Try Wispr Flow free on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android.
2. NotebookLM
Turn those notes into revision.
Yes, I know. NotebookLM again.
But it's genuinely that good, and I can't write about notes without it. Sorry, not sorry.
Last time I showed you how to drop a YouTube link into it. This time, drop in your notes from step 1.
Copy the transcript, paste it into NotebookLM as a source, and ask for things like:
"Make me a 10-question quiz on this lecture"
"Turn the key terms into flashcards"
"Explain the hardest part like I'm a beginner"
Or hit Audio Overview and it turns the whole thing into a short podcast you can listen to on the bus.
The real trick: add every lecture from one module (or every meeting from one project). Then you can ask questions across all of it, not just one session.
Who it's for: anyone with exams this term, or a project with too many meetings.
3. Gamma
Turn your notes into slides in about a minute.
Got a presentation coming up? A seminar slot, a project update, a pitch?
Paste your notes (or the summary from step 1) into Gamma and it builds the whole deck for you: layout, headings, images. You just tweak what you don't like.
Not a slides person? It does documents and simple web pages the same way.
Free to start: you get 400 credits when you sign up, which is enough for roughly 10 decks.
Who it's for: anyone with a presentation due and better things to do with their evening.
My take
One tool to catch what was said.
One to turn it into revision.
One to turn it into something you can present.
All three are free to start.
The meeting is the easy part. It's everything after it that eats your week. These just make the "after" a lot shorter.
Catch you next week,
Max