I know, 8% of the year already passed by, but since it's the first time you read from me this year, and I'm still not over with my OKRs and end-of-year retrospective, I wish you happy new year 2025!! (More on the yearly retro template in the random section at the end).

As always in this newsletter, some Meetical product news, some Atlassian news, meeting & productivity tips, and – you guessed it – #random stuff! Let's jump into it!

Meeting Productivity Tip

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow explores the dual systems of human cognition—System 1 (fast, intuitive, automatic thinking) and System 2 (slow, deliberate, analytical thinking) — and how cognitive biases shape decision-making.

Here’s one insight that can transform meeting effectiveness: Avoid Overreliance on System 1 in Critical Meeting Discussions.

Meetings often default to System 1 thinking (quick judgments, gut feelings), leading to rushed decisions or groupthink.

Solution:

• Structure agendas to include pauses for reflection (activating System 2).
• Assign a "devil’s advocate" to challenge assumptions.
• Use pre-reads to give participants time to analyze data beforehand.
• Request a written opinion from key people before or after the meeting.

Credits for this tip see #random section below.

Task Reports News

An important success factor of meetings is effective action item management. While Meetical helps you to manage meetings and automate admin tasks, Task Reports for Jira/Confluence helps you with effective task/action item management.

Many Confluence Users not only track tasks on Meeting Notes in shared spaces, but also track task both on a individual level or for their 1-on-1 meetings in their Confluence Personal Space!

New: Track tasks in personal spaces

If you track tasks or meetings on your personal space, you can now also include the "personal space of current user".

This way you can build a report for yourself but also create and share your dashboard and whoever visits will see tasks from their personal space!

Try it out, the App is available for free on the Atlassian Marketplace!

Thanks Carina, Alexander, Michael for this f!

Please continue to send your ideas to us? :)

Coming soon

Next up in the backlog for Task Reports: We'll allow to automatically assign tasks to the creator of the task, if nobody is assigned. This way you can track unassigned tasks, and you don't have to tag yourself for your personal tasks! Quicker and easier task management. Stay tuned.  

Meetical Roadmap

For Meetical Calendar, we're finishing the Link Page Feature to include all types of Meeting Series and will then probably move our focus to integrating advanced Task Management features, carry over action items and *drumroll* AI features! Do you use Fireflies.ai or any other meeting bots? Then please reach out and let's have a chat on how to integrate them!

Review of the Month

Our second YouTube review is out! Mike is a great Atlassian/Jira Consultant and has a sheer infinite number of side projects! This is why I'm specially happy that he found some time to create a fantastic review about the Meetical App on Youtube. It's also an opportunity for you to update yourself on the latest features for Meetical we've developed.

Thank you Mike!

→ Watch the new Video on Youtube!

#Random

Fun fun fan with ran-do-man.

#AI Credits for the meeting productivity tip at the beginning go to Deepseek! (🙀) I tested it against ChatGPT, and asked for book recommendations related to meeting productivity. Deepseek came up with a list that included Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. While I adore that book and author, I was surprised! And followed up with "Meeting Productivity Tips based on Kahneman's book". Quite cool check out our blog to read them all.

#Appvent  Nobody want's to go back to christmas right now. Beside those who missed the great podcast style video chat with the legendary Senior Atlassian Consulting aka "Confluence god" Anja from Swarmit and myself (On YouTube, German with subtitles).

#Stats Drumroll! The click stats from the last newsletter ... the first time the random section did not win! Most clicked was the link to our new free Jira app feature on how to quickly create meetings from Jira issues. If I would have a CMO in place he would be happy with that, thank you all 😃. Second place the Link Existing Pages to your Calendar and third place Anatoly's video review for the Meetical app! If you missed it, check out the last newsletter.

‍
#Retrospective of the year – Agile Pete, remarkable friend, Agile Coach and Meeticalist from the first hour shared this fantastic Personal Retrospective Template on our new year call. You don’t have to wait for New Year's Eve—this can be used at any other time for reflection and goal-setting!

I hoped you got out something from this newsletter. Please do not hesitate to hit reply and let me know your feedback. Have an amazing, happy, and intelligent start into part 2 of 12 for this year!

Make sure you check out our new Meetical Landing Page and the new Task Reports features!

Please let me know any questions or feedback! Stay meetical,

Lukas

Founder & CEO