How to turn Granola action items into a to-do list
Updated
Short answer: Copy your own action items out of the note as soon as the meeting ends, with who each is for and when it’s due, into the list you check every day. To catch up on several meetings at once, run a Granola recipe set to Multiple meetings that pulls out your action items; to make it automatic, send notes to your task app with Zapier’s “Note Added to Granola Folder” trigger, or use an app that reads your notes for you.
Why do action items get stuck in meeting notes?
A meeting note is a record, not a reminder. Granola writes a good one, and it can even turn a meeting’s action items into a checklist inside the note. But the note only helps when you open it again, and most people don’t: the next meeting starts, and the items yours to do sit next to everyone else’s, with no date pulling them back in front of you.
The two-minute habit after each meeting
- Open the note as the meeting ends, while you still remember the context.
- Copy out only what’s yours to do, in one line each: what, for whom, and by when.
- Note what others promised you too. Those are answers you’re now waiting on.
- Do the two-minute ones on the spot: the intro, the link, the quick yes.
- Send a one-line recap of what you’ll do, so the other person knows you heard it.
How do you pull action items from several meetings at once?
Use a recipe. In Granola, recipes are reusable prompts: type / in the chat bar, or open the Recipes tab. A recipe set to Multiple meetings can run from the home screen, a folder, or a selection of meetings, and extracting action items from recent meetings is one of the uses Granola suggests. Run it once a week and copy what’s yours into your list.
List the action items from these meetings that are mine, one per line: what I’ll do, who it’s for, and when it’s due. Then list what others said they’d do for me. Leave out everything else.
How do you send them to your task app automatically?
Granola’s Zapier app has two triggers, Note Added to Granola Folder and Note Shared to Zapier. Point one at a folder such as Follow up, and add a step that creates a task in Todoist, Asana, Notion or Google Tasks. Granola can also send notes to a personal Notion database, and its MCP connection lets Claude or ChatGPT read your notes, so you can ask what you promised this week and paste the answer into your list.
Ways to get Granola action items onto your list
| Way | Effort | Reminds you | Closes when you deliver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lowtide | None after connecting | Yes, with a draft to the person | Yes, by email or Slack |
| Copy them after each meeting | Two minutes a meeting | Only if your list does | No, you tick it off |
| A Multiple meetings recipe | A few minutes a week | No | No |
| Zapier to your task app | Set up once | Your task app does | No, you tick it off |
Questions people ask
Does Granola make a to-do list?
Granola can turn a meeting’s action items into a checklist in the note, and recipes can list to-dos across recent meetings. They stay inside Granola, though: nothing reminds you of them, and nothing closes them when you’ve sent what you promised.
Can Granola send action items to Todoist or Asana?
Through Zapier. Its Granola triggers fire when a note is added to a folder or shared to Zapier, and a following step can create a task in Todoist, Asana, Notion or Google Tasks.
How do I keep track of what others promised me in a meeting?
Write it down with who and by when, look again two or three working days later, and ask about the specific thing if it hasn’t come. Our guide to following up on what people promised you in a meeting goes into more detail.
Sources
What this guide says about other products and research comes from these sources, checked on the date above.