What to keep track of about the people you manage
Keep five things per person: what they are working on, what they want next, constraints they have told you about, feedback exchanged in both directions, and open commitments between you. Everything else is optional and most of it is noise. The test for including something is whether it would change a decision you make in the next quarter.
What should a manager record about each person?
Five categories cover almost everything that turns out to matter. Written as short lines rather than meeting minutes, they take about a minute a week per person to maintain.
The reason to keep the list short is that long records do not get updated, and an out-of-date record is worse than none: it gives you false confidence about someone whose situation changed two months ago.
Current work
What they are actually spending time on, which is often not what their job title or the project plan says. Note it when it changes, not weekly.
Stated goals
What they have told you they want next, a skill, a scope change, a different kind of problem. Use their words, not your interpretation, and date it. Goals stated eighteen months ago are historical, not current.
Constraints
Anything they have told you that limits what is reasonable to ask of them right now: caring responsibilities, health, visa timing, a house move, study. Record only what they volunteered, at the level of detail they volunteered it.
Feedback exchanged
What you have told them, when, and whether anything changed. Also what they have told you. Without this, performance conversations become a recollection contest, and the person with more at stake usually remembers more accurately than you do.
Open commitments
What each of you owes the other. This is the category most often skipped and most often the source of eroded trust.
What should you not write down?
Anything you would not be willing to show the person, anything about protected characteristics, and speculation about their intentions.
The willingness test is a good one to apply literally. "Seemed frustrated in the planning meeting, worth asking about" is a note. "Has an attitude problem" is a judgment you have now made permanent and searchable, and it will shape how the next manager reads them long after the context is gone.
Health details, family circumstances, and similar personal information should be recorded only to the extent you need it to do your job, usually "reduced availability until March" rather than the reason.
How do you keep the record current without it becoming a chore?
Capture in the moment, in one line, and review in a single weekly pass. Do not batch capture, the details you lose are exactly the ones you meant to keep.
One line immediately after a 1:1, while you are still in the room, beats a careful write-up you intend to do on Friday. The write-up will not happen, and if it does, it will be a reconstruction.
LetEmily is built around this pattern: capture a line from the app or from Slack, and Emily attaches it to the right person and brings it back before your next conversation with them, without a filing step.