Tips for Balancing Meeting Frequency and Productivity

Anyone else suffer from meeting overload? It’s a big deal. Simply put too many meetings means less time available for actual work, plus constantly attending meetings can be mentally draining, and often they simply are not required to accomplish the agenda items. At the same time sometimes it’s unavoidable. No matter where you are in your career, here are a few ways that I tackle this topic so that I can be my best and hold myself accountable to how my time is spent. I take 15 minutes every Friday to look at the week ahead and what is on my calendar. I follow these tips to ensure what is on the calendar should be and that I’m prepared. It ensures that I have a relevant and focused communications approach, and enables me to focus on optimizing productivity, outcomes and impact. 1. Review the meeting agenda. If there’s no agenda I send an email asking for one so you know exactly what you need to prepare for, and can ensure your time is correctly prioritized. You may discover you’re actually not the correct person to even attend. If it’s your meeting, set an agenda because accountability goes both ways. 2. Define desired outcomes. What do you want/need from the meeting to enable you to move forward? Be clear about it with participants so you can work collaboratively towards the goal in the time allotted. 3. Confirm you need the meeting. Meetings should be used for difficult or complex discussions, relationship building, and other topics that can get lost in text-based exchanges. A lot of times though we schedule meetings that we don’t actually require a meeting to accomplish the task at hand. Give ourselves and others back time and get the work done without that meeting. 4. Shorten the meeting duration. Can you cut 15 minutes off your meeting? How about 5? I cut 15 minutes off some of my recurring meetings a month ago. That’s 3 hours back in a week I now have to redirect to high impact work. While you’re at it, do you even need all those recurring meetings? It’s never too early for a calendar spring cleaning. 5. Use meetings for discussion topics, not FYIs. I save a lot of time here. We don’t need to speak to go through FYIs (!) 6. Send a pre-read. The best meetings are when we all prepare for a meaningful conversation. If the topic is a meaty one, send a pre-read so participants arrive with a common foundation on the topic and you can all jump straight into the discussion and objectives at hand. 7. Decline a meeting. There’s nothing wrong with declining. Perhaps you’re not the right person to attend, or there is already another team member participating, or you don’t have bandwidth to prepare. Whatever the reason, saying no is ok. What actions do you take to ensure the meetings on your calendar are where you should spend your time? It’s a big topic that we can all benefit from, please share your tips in the comments ⤵️ #careertips #productivity #futureofwork

🕒 Tired of too many meetings? Let's make our work hours count! 🚀 We've all been there – a day packed with back-to-back meetings, leaving little time for actual work. 🙅♂️ It's time to rethink our approach and reclaim our productivity. Here are a few strategies to tackle the "too many meetings" syndrome: 1️⃣ Meeting Purpose: Before scheduling or accepting a meeting, ask yourself: "Is this necessary?" Ensure each meeting has a clear agenda and purpose. 2️⃣ Time Blocks: Dedicate specific time blocks for meetings and others for focused work. Guard your "deep work" hours like gold. 3️⃣ Agenda & Goals: Share the meeting agenda and objectives in advance. This allows attendees to prepare, making meetings more efficient. 4️⃣ Limit Attendees: Invite only those who truly need to be in the meeting. Smaller groups often lead to more productive discussions. 5️⃣ Stand-Up Meetings: Some discussions can be handled in quick stand-up meetings. Keep them short and to the point. 6️⃣ Meeting-Free Days: Designate certain days as "meeting-free" to allow everyone uninterrupted work time. 7️⃣ Tech Tools: Utilize productivity tools like project management software and collaboration platforms to streamline communication. 8️⃣ Feedback Loop: Encourage open feedback on the meeting culture within your organization. Are there ways to improve? Let's remember that the goal is not to eliminate meetings entirely but to make them purposeful and efficient. ⏰ How do you strike a balance between collaboration and focused work? 🤔💼 #Productivity #MeetingManagement #WorkSmart #Leadership Together, we can create a more productive and fulfilling work environment! 💪💼🌟

Time is limited, so spend it wisely. Leaders have to maintain a balancing act between being protective of time but also available for their team when inevitable things come up. I balance by scheduling “free” time and “me” time at work. I never want my team to think I’m too busy for them, so I put gaps in my day where I’m free for them to reach me if they need me. During this “free” time, I’m either sitting at my desk (which is out in the open – no door necessary) or walking around, so I’m easily accessible. During “me” time, I give 100% of my focus to doing the work I need to do that day. I’ve found that the biggest time waster for many leaders is meetings. If you’re going to be protective of your time, you have to choose the meetings you attend carefully. Here’s how I do it: – Avoid scheduling more than 2 meetings back-to-back. This gives time to soak in the content of the meeting, decompress, and show up as my best self the rest of the day. – Only attend meetings if I need to hear what’s being discussed or my input is needed. I want whoever is running the meeting to know that they have my full confidence and attention. I try to balance supporting leaders on my team while also giving them the space they need and want. It’s about creating trust and a safe space to lead and grow. – Avoid setting or attending meetings about things that can be discussed through email. I don’t call meetings just for the sake of meeting. Meetings aren’t action items. Their purpose is to provide information, gain alignment, and provide clarity for the actions that need to come from this new information. If something can be communicated through an email, that saves everyone time. How do you protect your time?

Atlassian's latest round of research on teamwork focused on meetings, and (unsurprisingly) respondents said they feel drained on days with lots of meetings. I can 100% relate! My team has started replacing some of our information-broadcast meetings with Loom videos. I love that we can take in all those updates in half the time, but still get that human element of seeing faces and hearing voices. That said, I want to share a few ways I safeguard my energy levels on days when going back-to-back just can’t be avoided: 1️⃣ Walking meetings. It's so important to move your body and we don't do enough of that when we're Zooming-from-anywhere all day. (Tip: a treadmill pad under your standing desk lets you walk at work no matter what the weather is.) 2️⃣ Meeting hour boundaries. Find what time of the day works best for focused work (for me, it’s mornings), and try to schedule your meetings outside of those hours. 3️⃣ 5-minute breaks! There's a lot of context and content switching throughout the day. Give yourself permission to take a quick pause before starting your next meeting. There's lots more data and insights in the report! 👇

I've worked at 3 unicorns. (Zenefits, Flexport and Deel) Which usually means: - Tons of pressure - An insane amount of work - Enough change to make your head spin Here are my best mental health tips as you head into the week: 1. Reduce meeting time. Go through your calendar and remove, reduce the time or push as many meetings as possible. Calendar creep is a real thing. So protect your time respectfully. People will understand. The most important blocks: ↪Monday morning ↪Friday afternoon 2. Pick your number 1 priority. Now that you have more time pick what's most important to execute on. And then make sure to do that thing first. Email can wait. Slack can wait. Trust me, nothing bad will happen if you prioritize the right things. 3. Take breaks. I'm guilty of working non-stop but when I do that I get stressed out and don't do my best work. Use the time you saved in step 1 to get outside, go for a walk, and recharge. 4. Drink less coffee. This one's wild. I went from 8 cups of coffee a day to 1 and my energy got better. Also, my anxiety and stress came down a ton and became a lot more manageable. Maybe it's just me but it's made such a difference that I have to recommend it. Obviously, reduce the amount you drink slowly (it's a process). I know these things sound simple. But in my experience they're some of the most important habits to go when things get crazy. - Mike G 👉 Join 5,000+ sellers getting my (free) sales newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/gwQVvVBK

Productivity tip for 2024: Shorten the amount of time you allocate for scheduled meetings. I used to schedule meetings for either 1 hour for what I anticipated would be a long meeting or 30 minutes for a short one. Now I keep everything to 30 and 15—and the same amount of stuff gets done. How is that possible? With less time, everyone gets better prepared and stays more focused. It's Parkinson's Law in action: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. The broader principle here is that when it comes to productivity, it's not about planning for big, bold changes, it's about actually implementing small, simple ones. Those add up to make a big impact.

If you are like me you may find that a good portion of your day is consumed by meetings... so many meetings... My favorite #NewYearsHack is consciously and intentionally resetting my entire calendar for the New Year. We have all heard countless quotes on the importance of time. How we spend our time is a choice... why not make it an intentional one? If you choose to rest your calendar you will find that it is quite exhilarating and refreshing. Every meeting that you own will have a renewed commitment and intention behind it. The #NewYearsHack is fairly straightforward but if done right, will take a few hours... Steps: 1) Delete all meetings that you own in your calendar - this includes all regularly scheduled 1:1's, team meetings, operational meetings, etc. Note: This is my favorite part. 😊 2) Now with a clean slate in front of you -- outside of your calendar -- start defining all of the meetings that you think need to have and own for the upcoming year. Start with those meetings you want to have weekly, every other week, monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, annually, etc. Include offsites and regularly scheduled strategic planning events that occur through the course of the year. 3) Now purposefully and intentionally review each meeting on your list and ask yourself, have I clearly defined the time needed (30 mins, 60 mins, shorter? longer?), is the frequency correct (what would happen if it was every other month vs. monthly - would you lose anything?), are the attendees correct (is every person required, or not?), and can you clearly define in one sentence the objective of the meeting, etc... 4) Now strategically consider when to schedule the identified meetings, intentionally creating open time blocks on your calendar for large blocks of time for you to complete projects and/or think strategically. 5) Once all of that is completed - outside of your calendar - then and only then do you reschedule the meetings in your calendar, inviting your attendees. I have followed this process consistently for the past four years and every single time I have made changes to my calendar that have created excitement for the New Year. If you do try the hack, drop me a comment as I'd love to hear about your experience with it.

A calendar full of meetings ≠ productivity It can be easy to fall into the mind trap that a fuller schedule means that you're doing more and delivering more to your company. I go through periods in which I allow myself to get way over scheduled and don't have time to do really important work. Then I fall way behind and work long hours to catch up. Doing good, productive work requires uninterrupted time. It requires focus, and it requires the discipline to allow myself to say no to meetings. Saying no to meetings, or forcing meetings to be focused and productive is an underrated skill - I admire those who are good at it. I love the Eisenhower Matrix of how to prioritize work. I think this can also be applied to determine if a meeting should be scheduled or not. For example... Is the topic urgent & important? = schedule the meeting ASAP (Note, I'm making the assumption that the topic can't be resolved via email, which >50% of meeting topics can be resolved via email) Is the topic not urgent, but important? = schedule the meeting for 2-3 weeks away, and ensure everyone is prepared for the meeting so it is focused and effectively, scheduling only the amount of time needed (If the topic, or part of the topic, can be resolved in the meantime via email, do that) Is the topic not important, but urgent? = make a decision on it, or call someone directly and discuss for <5 minutes, decide and move on Is the topic not urgent and not important? = don't even bring it up, move on Are there any tools or tips you have for eliminating meetings from your calendar so you have more time to do focused work? #productivity #meetings #management

It's the most boring topic, but it also inspires some of the strongest opinions. What is it? ➡ Meetings There's either too many, or not enough. They're either a waste of time, or the best and most productive part of your week. They either have too little structure or too much. Here's what has worked for me: ⭐ Try to hold all one on ones on one day each week, and in general, pick one or two days of the week when you block your calendar and do NOT schedule meetings. ⭐ If a meeting is purely information (a readout), make it an email or a Slack update. ⭐ Every meeting should have an agenda, and the person who called the meeting should prep the agenda, and ensure notes are being taken and action items recorded (Hot tip: If you're a G Suite user, I love the "take meeting notes" feature in calendar invitations). ⭐ That being said ^^, the agenda doc should be collaborative and anyone attending the meeting should be expected to review the agenda in advance and add any discussion items they think are missing. ⭐ If it's a recurring meeting, have one document that acts as a rolling meeting agenda, notes doc, and to do list. Having everything in one place makes it easier to track progress week over week/month over month. ⭐ With recurring meetings, start each meeting by reviewing the action items from the previous meeting and specifically discuss anything that wasn't completed so there's a plan of action to ensure it gets done. ⭐ If your team is remote or hybrid, strongly encourage your team to be on camera. It's so much easier to read tone and develop a sense of connection with people when you can see their faces. It also makes it much easier to see if someone is actually paying attention and engaged in the meeting, or if they're multitasking. ⭐ Be clear about whether attendance at meetings is optional or required - and when it's required, insist that people show up and be on time. I've still got a lot of room for improvement when it comes to how I structure meetings and would love to hear what tips you all have for making your meetings great. Share your best tips in the comments 👇 #meetings #kathleenhq

Failing Up with Time Management & Context Switching How many of you have said to yourself: "I spent my whole day in meetings...when am I supposed to get any work done???" Time is your most valuable asset, and like it or not, your job likely requires a commitment to team meetings, 1:1s, huddles/working sessions, etc. The reality is, there's always going to feel like you have more work to do than time to do it. I've f'ed up by leaving an organization and thinking that my next role would allow me to have more time to get things done. It didn't turn out that way, and there was nobody to blame besides myself and my time management skills. I eventually realized that my biggest issue was context switching. I'd jump from meeting, to work on a project, to answer slack/emails, back into meetings. Sure, I was moving 10-15 projects forward incrementally. But I wasn't making the right type of progress since I wasn't allowing myself enough time to truly focus. What I eventually settled into was a schedule where I'd load my mornings with necessary meetings ("necessary" being the key word there). And my afternoons were blocked off for dedicated focus on specific marketing disciplines. Here's an approach that worked for me, but could be applied to any role, in any function, within any industry: Monday: Weekly Alignment Meetings & Campaign Building Tuesday: Events & Field Mktg Wednesday: RevOps Thursday: Product Mktg Friday: Thought Leadership/Content & Campaign Launches Those focus periods each day allowed me to increase my productivity, and also helped me say no to projects that didn't fit into one of my categories. Not sure where to get started? Try a short time study: Audit your schedule for 1-2 weeks. Categorize your meetings and working blocks throughout your day. Take a look at where you're spending your time, and determine if it aligns with your key priorities and objectives. Then organize your schedule in a way that can dedicate an appropriate amount of time each day/week to appropriate projects.