Three quick questions:
- How many hours per week do you spend in meetings?
- How many of them take longer than they need to?
- What’s the average length of your meetings?
Typical answers are:
- 24-30 hours per week
- Most of them
- 30 or 60 minutes per meeting
So here’s the time-saving tip…
SHORTEN YOUR MEETINGS
As in, if your default meeting length is 30 or 60 minutes, shorten it.
For example, reduce it by a third to 20 or 40 minutes.
Clearly, if you shorten all your meetings by a third, you’ll reduce by a third the total time you spend in them.
So knock a third off your answer to question 1 – and that’s your time-saving every week.
So above, I answered 24-30 hours per week. This means I’ve saved 8-10 hours. Every week. Hours I’d have spent in needlessly long meetings.
Of course, there’ll be some meetings that take exactly the right time. So keep them as they are.
But there’ll also be some meetings you don’t need at all. So stop them.
I love this Tip.
Why?
Because my favourite Tips for me are those that (1) make me a lot better (2) are super-easy to do.
If you judge things the same way, this might be the best Tip you ever see!
Action Points
For your:
- Rubbish meetings – stop them
- Overlong meetings – shorten them
- The rest – keep them as they are…
…and enjoy the extra hours you’ll get every week
And with your new spare time, you might want to look at these.