Prepare for the meeting by researching words likely to be used frequently during the session from the meeting agenda. A petroleum company meeting agenda titled "The Effects of Drilling on Alaskan Wildlife" will have drilling terms, acronyms and slang descriptions applicable to protecting animals and the environment during the drilling process. Make a list of as many of the words you can find in the agenda, search for them in a shorthand dictionary, then devise your own shorthand abbreviations for the others. Practice writing several pages of the words on a steno pad until they become familiar.
While hand-recording the meeting minutes, if the shorthand brief forms and phrases don't come to mind immediately, don't waste precious time trying to remember them. Abbreviate just enough of the word in longhand to understand and transcribe it later.
Gregg shorthand, the only shorthand system used in the U.S. today, has approximately 185 brief forms of commonly used words covering every day language. Learn and use the brief forms so that they become second nature. Words like "acknowledge," "advantage," "advertise," "different," "recognize" and "yesterday" take only seconds to write and increase your note-taking speed significantly.
Shorthand skill and speed comes with consistent practice. You can effortlessly build both with daily use. Place a steno pad nearby when you sit down to watch television. Each time a commercial interrupts the programming, take the commercial down in shorthand. Later, see if you can read it back. In no time you'll see a marked increase in your overall shorthand speed and in your shorthand vocabulary.