The Best AI Prompt to Turn Notes into Actions
Most people have no shortage of notes: meeting notes, journal entries, whiteboard photos, scribbles from calls. What is missing is a clear, prioritised list of actions. AI is excellent at transforming raw notes into something you can use immediately.
This guide gives you a single, flexible prompt that turns almost any collection of notes into a practical action list, plus a few variations for different situations.
Core “notes into actions” prompt
You are my action-tracking assistant. I will paste messy notes from meetings,
calls or brainstorming sessions.
Please:
1) Extract all specific actions I need to take.
2) For each action, suggest an owner (usually me, but not always).
3) Suggest an approximate due date based on the context.
4) Present the result as a table with columns:
Owner | Action | Due date | Notes
Here are the notes:
[PASTE NOTES]
Use this anytime you finish a meeting or planning session and feel unsure what should actually happen next.
Prompt variation: Focus on today and this week
You are my prioritisation assistant. I will paste a list of actions or notes.
Please:
1) Identify which actions should be done today.
2) Identify which actions should be done this week.
3) Highlight any actions that can be safely deferred.
Return the result as three bullet lists: Today, This week, Later.
Here are the actions/notes:
[PASTE TEXT]
Prompt variation: Actions by project
You are my project-organising assistant. I will paste a mix of notes and
actions from several projects.
Please:
1) Identify which project each action belongs to.
2) Group actions by project.
3) For each project, list the actions in a sensible order.
Present the result as:
Project name
- Action 1
- Action 2
...
Here are the notes:
[PASTE NOTES]
FAQs
What if my notes are very messy?
That is fine. AI is designed to handle unstructured text. You can paste partial sentences, bullet points or fragments. If the output looks wrong, ask the AI to show its interpretation of your notes and correct anything important.
Should I always trust the suggested due dates?
Treat due dates as suggestions, not commands. Adjust them based on your real deadlines and capacity. You can also ask the AI to propose dates within a specific range, such as “within the next two weeks”.
Where should I put the final action list?
Copy the final list into whatever system you actually use daily: a task manager, calendar, document or notebook. AI can help you think, but the actions still need to live somewhere you will see them.
Next steps
Take notes from a recent meeting or personal planning session and run them through the core prompt. Then schedule or capture the resulting actions in your normal system.
For more structure around meetings, email and planning, the AI Productivity for Busy Professionals course includes complete workflows that use prompts like this at each stage.