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
- Most of them
- 30 or 60 minutes
So here’s the time-saving tip…
SHORTEN YOUR MEETINGS
As in, if your default meeting length (answer 3) is 30 or 60 minutes, change it to 20 or 40.
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. Example: if you answered 24-30 hours, this will save you 8-10 hours.
Every week!
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. In fact, my favourite tips are the ones that both (1) make me a lot better and (2) are super-easy to do.
If you judge things the same way as this, today’s Tip might be the best tip you ever see!
Action Points
- 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.