How to Not Let Meetings Ruin Your Work Day
Since taking a job as Marketing Manager at Boshart Industries, the content of my work week has changed pretty drastically from the days of being a freelancer. I now have coworkers, and while that is a blessing that freelancing cannot provide, it also means I have a ton more meetings with people than I ever have.
I’m still figuring this job out, but my first 3 months would indicate that you spend a lot of time talking about the things you’re going to do. You want to accomplish a lot of things because you have a lot of big ideas (if you don’t know that I’m a guy with a lot of ideas, allow me to introduce myself). But wanting to do so many different things can make it difficult to actually do something if all you ever do is just talk about doing them and never actually do them. 😂 I’m rambling a little now but you get the point.
Those meetings I’ve mentioned—the vast majority of which I enjoy being a part of—can take up your entire workweek if you’re not careful. Instead of making stuff, you’re solely managing. And that’s a rough place to be.
If you find that meetings are taking over your work life, here are the handful of ways I’ve found to combat them.
1. Be difficult to plan a meeting with
Ha! This one is a funny one but it’s so true. It rides on the principle that governs this entire blog.
Your time is your most valuable asset. You only get a finite amount of it in a given week (even if you’re a workaholic).
Guard your time with aggression.
If you time-block your day (schedule chunks of time dedicated to specific projects on your to-do list), your schedule naturally fills up and it becomes more challenging for someone to demand part of your time. Especially if you’re using an app like Microsoft Teams that have built-in Scheduling Assistants (that allow you to view your invitees’ schedules), it makes it more tricky for someone to find a time-slot that aligns with your availability.
2. By default, schedule 30 minute meetings
For the first 9 weeks of my time in my new job, most meets were scheduled for an hour. Whether I thought it really needed it or not, it would probably be given an hour. 30 minute meetings felt awkwardly short.
My team made the switch to shorter meetings as our default and it has already made this so much easier.
Because I believe so deeply in Parkinson’s Law (that the project will complicate or simplify itself to fit the allotted time you’ve given to complete the task), this is a prime example of making it work in our favour.
30 minute meetings have helped us to keep on-topic way more quickly and easily, and they’ve also reduced the amount of back-to-back meetings we have in a day, which was another request my team had.
Arguably one of the biggest tips on this list. Don’t snooze on it.
3. Only invite attendees that are absolutely necessary
As a manager, it’s easy to get invited to a ton of meetings that you only half need to be in. Scratch that: whoever you are, it’s easy to get invited to meetings you don’t really need to be a part of.
Sometimes it’s too hard to tell if you need to be a part of a meeting you’ve been invited to prior to it actually happening. Because we can control that less, we’ll focus on the people we invite to our meetings.
The criteria to invite someone to a meeting (in my humble opinion) looks something like this:
Does this meeting directly correlate to this person’s responsibilities?
Does this person have insight to the problem we’re solving that we could really utilize?
Does this person have the capacity to attend this meeting?
Are we unable to make a decision without this person’s insight?
If the answer to at least 1 of those questions isn’t a resounding yes, they shouldn’t get an invite.
This isn’t a matter of playing favourites or intentionally keeping contrasting opinions out of the question for the sake of sailing on through to the finish line. It’s a matter of respecting other people’s time, and stepping up to the plate, donning more confidence, and making decisions without being babysat throughout the whole process.
4. Create a meeting agenda alongside the invite
Sometimes as much as 3 weeks will elapse from the day you send the meeting invite to the day you actually have the meeting. Heck, even if it’s only 3 hours, that can sometimes still be enough time to forget about why you called the meeting in the first place.
Develop the discipline of sending out an agenda (or a guiding set of questions) that is intended to start conversation and keep it moving in a positive direction.
Creating agendas are really quite simple. Ask yourself:
What is the ultimate problem we’re trying to solve?
What are the unknowns we need to work through?
What questions do we need answered that only this group of people can answer together in real time?
If you need more help than that to figure out a meeting agenda, I’m going to wager you don’t really know why you’re calling a meeting, and you should cancel it before you start.
5. Have remote meetings more often than in-person
If you all work in the same office everyday of your life, this one doesn’t quite apply. But if your team is sometimes remote or at least has the ability to be remote, intend to use a video call to host this meeting.
Of course, having a meeting over video is not the same as having it in person. Depending on the level of interactivity you’re hoping for, video calls can actually be a real hindrance to the process (particularly if your attendees are unfamiliar with video calling and haven’t learned the etiquette that accompanies it).
But, assuming you’re fine with video calls and they’re not uncommon, err on that side more often than not.
The time spent getting to and from a meeting (even if it’s just 5-10 minutes within the office building) can really mess up back-to-back meetings. Sometimes these back-to-back meetings are unavailable (despite how handy it is not to have them), so you make it easier for other people to get on with their workdays by planning for remote.
By planning for remote and giving the option for in-person, you give people the choice about what’s convenient for them. And when you’re already asking people to give you their time to help you solve a problem (the entire reason we have meetings), you show them more respect by allowing them to choose the means in which they’ll participate.
6. Simultaneously schedule de-brief time after the meeting
Every meeting is a little different, but for the most part when I leave a meeting, I’m fired up and ready to take over the world. When you have back-to-back meetings on a variety of topics, instead you’re going to emerge from that block of meetings feeling exhausted and scatterbrained. It’ll also probably feel overwhelming to start being productive on the things you just spent time talking about.
Shortening meetings to 30 minutes but aiming to keep the remaining 30 minutes of that hour open to act upon what you discussed in that meeting is a really great idea to ensure stuff actually gets done.
This not only gives you an opportunity to do stuff, it also gives you a mental break from topic to topic. It makes a morning full of meetings feel far less taxing.
I have a variation of this idea that I want to try out in the coming weeks. I’ll dive more into it in the Bonus section below.
7. Leave the meeting with actionable steps
Ok - as if having lots and lots of meetings isn’t bad enough, what’s worse is having meets (of any kind or frequency) that ultimately end up going nowhere and leave you needing another meeting just to decide what to do with what you discussed in the last meeting.
Multiple times throughout a meeting—starting as early as halfway through when I can—I’ll try to ask, “Ok. So what do we do from here?” and try to get the group thinking about the actual practical things we have to do based on the decisions we made in this meeting.
If you don’t leave a meeting with a clear idea of what you should do next because of having this meeting, it was a waste.
Even if the actionable step you take is “take no further action on this; come back to it at an undetermined time in the future,” that’s still a step. I love it. I often have meetings like this! Because meetings are opportunities to bounce crazy ideas off of each other in real time, it’s important to have the wisdom to recognize: sometimes uncovering more of an idea will quickly uncover the simultaneous bad reason it is to proceed in this direction.
Not only is it important to have actionable steps spelled out, who is responsible for them is also really critical to making sure it gets done. If you need to spend time going through a really clear procedure, step-by-step, of what’s going to happen next: do it! But everyone who is a part of this meeting should have a clear visual of what their role is in making the next step happen.
The last actionable step that should be considered (though not always implemented) is putting a timeline on things with a follow-up meeting.
I firmly believe deadlines are our best friend in business. It’s Parkinson’s Law all over again. If you don’t give yourself a set time to do this in, you’re not prioritizing it at all, and I’d question if it’s even worth having met about in the first place.
Even if you are the only one setting or enforcing that deadline, give yourself one. You’d be surprised what the idea of a goal will do to your subconscious (even if you’re the one who set it) in terms of gathering motivation to complete something. You feel indebted to your past self who decided this needed to be done by a certain time. That’s a great way to trick yourself into finishing what you start.
8. Avoid recurring meetings with a vague purpose
As much as I was just championing the idea to book follow-up meetings (in a roundabout way) in my last tip, it’s also really important to scrutinize every meeting you set up: particularly ones that recur often without question.
A reminder: Every minute you’re spending in a meeting is a minute you’re not spending accomplishing things.
This is, of course, assuming that your meeting is a discussion meeting (as most are) and not a lets-work-alongside-each-other-on-a-shared-or-separate-project meeting, which is far less common.
Recurring meetings have their place: but consider ending them when the project ends or when they start to seem void of purpose. If they aren’t accomplishing the original task you set out for them to accomplish, or you’ve forgotten what it is altogether, it’s time to move on.
9. Don’t have meetings that should’ve been emails
This is simple in theory but difficult to practice. Especially when you really like your coworkers (like me).
If something could be exchanged with a couple of minutes of back and forth in an email exchange, that’s probably a lot more productive than a meeting, where you’re likely setting aside that entire 30 minutes to the task at hand.
As has been the repeating theme throughout this blog: scrutinize your meetings thoroughly, and abbreviate them as much as you think you can (actually, more). You’d be surprised how wasteful (or, generous) we can become when allotting time for meetings.
The meetings you call carry more authority when you call them sparingly.
People will respond and come prepared more often when they know that having a meeting with you is something that is uncommon.
As a bonus tip that ties into a previous one: when you’re drafting your meeting agenda, do it in the form of questions. If that could easily be copied & pasted into an email and fired off, try it. If you get a reply, you’ll know it didn’t need to be a meeting. If the person on the other end of that email thinks it’s too complicated to write back, you’ll know a meeting is the right choice.
Bonus: Equal Balance of Making & Managing
This is an experiment I’m going to be trying out in the near future: For every minute of meeting time I schedule (managing), I should also schedule an equal minute of time-blocked “me” time (making). What do I fill that “me” time with? Actually following through on many of the meetings I have, or the giant To-Do list on my computer.
The idea here, if followed diligently, is that your time to have meetings will never exceed your time to do stuff. Even still, the ratio of 1:1 is probably still not a great ratio, because (if your meetings are anything like mine) you probably need 2 times as much time after the length of the meeting to execute on it. Still, I think starting with a 1:1 ratio is at least something, and provides a better balance than the often meeting time outweighing the executing time.
Another reason this is so important: you need to know what feeds your soul in your job. As much as I love talking with people and bouncing ideas off of them, actually feeling a sense of accomplishment when I create something is immensely satisfying and motivating.
By splitting my day between making stuff and managing stuff, I protect my longevity in my role, and ensure that I don’t fall into the trap of taking on more than I can execute on.
In Summary
Time is your life’s most finite resource. And if you’re striving for a comfortable work-life balance, it’s important you guard both your work-time and your play-time equally. But even still, within work-time and play-time, things can quickly become convoluted if we aren’t careful.
Hopefully there’s an idea, or the spark of an idea, in this blog that helps you take back your life from meetings after meetings. Sometimes, you just need to have your attention drawn to how badly it’s gotten out of hand, and then you can start fixing it.
Enjoy being a more productive person than you were before you read this far!
