Granola and Claude: my second brain for running several businesses

Monday morning. Ten o'clock. Three meetings in the day: a naturopathy consultation, a check-in with one of my brand's teams, and a call with a school where I teach.

I used to leave every meeting with scribbled notes, a Post-it stuck to my screen, and a vague sense I had forgotten something. In the evening, I would reread three different supports, rebuild, rewrite. A quarter of my energy was spent on short-term memory.

Today I open Granola, I let it run, I speak normally. The report is ready when I hang up. Claude extracts what matters, sorts it by project, and hands it back to me as clean memory. I do not lose anything, and more importantly, I actually close my files before the end of the day.

The problem

I run several activities in parallel. A consulting practice, a brand I cofound, teaching in a naturopathy school, content creation. Four universes, four calendars, four groups of people waiting for a reply.

The trap I did not see at first: each activity weighs little in isolation, but the sum creates a huge mental load. Not because of the work itself. Because of context switching. Going from a consultation to a product meeting in five minutes is brutal on the mind.

I took notes, of course. But I took them badly. Too much detail at times, too little at others. And I rarely reread them. They stayed stuck in notebooks, tabs, Slack messages I no longer opened.

What I set up

Two tools, one simple pipeline.

Granola to capture. I launch Granola before every meeting, online or in person. The tool listens, transcribes, and already structures a first draft. I leave the meeting with a readable document, without ever taking my eyes off the conversation.

Claude to sort. Behind that, Claude reads the transcripts. I described my projects once, along with the people orbiting each one. When I pass a report to Claude, it knows which project it belongs to, what concrete actions come out of it, and what deserves to move into my calendar.

Each report is cut into three parts. Decisions made. Actions to take, with a responsible person and a deadline. Information that may serve later, filed by project.

A Friday ritual. Every Friday, Claude sends me a weekly summary. What I committed to, what I delivered, what is slipping. That is when I close or reschedule, not before. Nothing has stayed in the "in progress" column for three weeks.

The result

I save about thirty minutes per meeting. Across ten to fifteen meetings a week, that adds up to five to seven hours reclaimed. Not small.

More importantly, I no longer wake up at three in the morning thinking about a forgotten promise. My teams have noticed. A collaborator told me last week: "you always come back with the right questions, you never ask the same thing twice." That is exactly the effect I was looking for.

And there is a benefit I did not expect. Because every conversation is tracked and re-read, my decisions become more consistent over time. I hear myself say less often "I no longer remember what we concluded." It is a small sentence, but in business it costs a lot of trust.

How you can replicate this

You do not need four activities for this system to serve you. It is enough to have regular meetings, projects that overlap, and that unpleasant feeling of never truly closing a day.

Start simple. Install Granola, try it for a week on your densest meetings. See if the transcription suits you before going further.

Then spend an hour with Claude. Describe your projects, your contacts, your priorities. Do not go long, go precise. What AI picks up fast is the frame. Give it a clean frame and it sorts your notes on its own.

Finally, block a fixed slot every week for the review. Without that meeting with yourself, the system fills up but never empties. For me it is Friday late afternoon. For you it might be Monday morning. The slot does not matter. What matters is that it exists.

One caveat. The tool does not replace your judgment. Claude sorts, but you decide what deserves an action and what deserves a clean forgetting. Mental load does not vanish because you automate. It shrinks because you stop carrying everything alone.

If you want to build your own system, I can help you put it in place in one session.

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