I Hated Meetings — You Do Too! But There Is Another More Productive Way…
5 Mindset changes that will make you more productive by treating meetings in a different way.
If you liked this article there are many more in my Productivity Blog:
https://www.productivateme.com/
After running 1000s of meetings in my corporate job and off it — I can honestly say — I HATED IT!!!
I perceived meetings as a necessary evil of the corporate world.
You must do it as part of your work, and you can’t avoid the cost it has on your productivity and the waste of your time.
Every small discussion became a full-blown meeting with people added left and right.
something that could be closed in the hallway in 5 min, became 15 people, 1-hour meeting with follow-ups.
After hitting the online bookshelf and learning to try and improve the issue — I understood that there are a few mindset changes that I need to change in order to have meetings in a way that will make them productive, and for me to stop hating them.
These are the 5 Mindset changes you need to change — to have productive meetings:
- You need to understand why some meetings are critical — especially for leaders — and cancel the rest.
- You need to understand the difference between Efficient vs Effective vs Productive Meetings.
- You need to understand how long a meeting should last.
- You need to understand what the criteria is to have a meeting.
- You need to understand that you can control your calendar.
Why do we hate meetings?
First, Let’s understand why we hate them so that we can change that:
Meetings are Timewasters because we use them for the wrong targets
People perceive meetings as timewasters, and let’s be real — in the way that we are handling them today — they are!
You sit in a room, or over the phone, listening to something that doesn’t concern you. It could have been summarized in 2 sentences and let you continue doing your actual work.
According to this research — meetings are a waste of time: Half of All Meetings Are A Waste Of Time.
The main three problems that bother me are:
The first problem is that most meetings are status updates and alignment meetings.
We sat and prepared slides and material for the other people in the meeting to be “aligned” on our status — mainly for the manager.
Do we all need to sit in a room and listen to someone updating their status which has no relevance to me just because the manager wants to be synced on the status???
The second problem, the “No time to review”, as I see it, a chicken and egg problem:
We want to review some material with people and get feedback.
We know that they will not sit and read the material before the meeting.
Why? because they know that we will read it for them during the meeting.
We are not in first grade anymore — we do not need someone to read to us from the board.
And third, we use meetings to make sure that the job gets done.
We don’t trust other people to push on their own so the way to move them forward and make sure they work on what we asked is to set a meeting and review the work.
Meetings cause context switches and prevent deep work.
What I hate most about meetings is that I am in the middle of my work, I get in the zone and start going into my deep work state… and then — DING!
A calendar reminder that I have a meeting.
This in turn causes me to lose focus, context switch to the meeting, and get back.
If it was once or twice during a workday, I guess we could live with that, but that is not the case.
When you don’t even have 30 min to eat during your day, the meeting context switch will wreak havoc on your deep work productivity.
If you are not in the meeting, you are out of the loop
If I miss a meeting at my job the impact is that I had missed some news or update.
The lack of that information might impact my decision-making.
And the annoying thing is that this missing information could be delivered to me in a ~10 min summary.
This is very annoying; since you feel obligated to sit in many meetings and remain concentrated for the 3 minutes that actually interest you.
1. Why are meetings critical if done right — especially to Leaders and Managers?
The first mindset change that you need to do is to understand that meetings can be a valuable tool for everyone, especially leaders and managers, if you do them right.
Meetings are a place for discussion, decision-making, form strategic plans, and brainstorming.
You cannot address these long important topics over email.
things will get lost, and it’s hard to track a discussion in a mail thread when it is critical to reach a mutual decision.
Meetings, especially after COVID and remote-only work, are a place to connect.
You sit in a room, or a video call, see people and connect with them in a way that is not possible over emails.
It’s a place where you can break a lot of tension and form interpersonal connections by seeing the other person smile. By hearing someone tell a joke or how his weekend went.
Meetings form a group of people — aligned to a specific cause.
It forms a team of people, if you are in the meeting, you are part of the team.
If you are not in the meeting, you are not part of the team.
In the meeting, the Team revises their previous decisions, concepts, updates, and makes new decisions.
“One-on-One” meetings are critical to forming relationships between people.
Especially between a manager and an employee.
“One on One” meetings allow for a designated time and place for each other.
The one-on-one time assures that you are focusing only on one another, and create trust and a relationship.
As a leader and manager, meetings are the best place for you to not be the person who only gets reports and statuses.
It’s a place for you to decide and push things in your direction.
To show your values and what matters to you.
To show by example what is guiding your decisions.
As a leader, you need to understand that sometimes you will just have to sit there in meetings …
Sometimes higher-ranking managers will not let go of seeing you in the meeting.
Sometimes you will need to be there so that your subordinates will see you there ready to back them up.
These might not feel efficient to you — but they are productive because, in the long run, you develop relationships by doing it.
2. Efficient vs Effective vs Productive Meetings.
The Second mindset that you need to change is how you perceive a good meeting.
There is a huge difference between an efficient meeting, an effective meeting, and a productive meeting.
The concepts are explained in this article Productivity vs Efficiency vs Effectiveness.
An efficient meeting starts on time, stays on the agenda, includes as few as possible people, and achieves the objectives.
Good job, right? Wrong!
It says nothing about whether the relevant people were in the meeting and more importantly whether the meeting produced any value.
An effective meeting would include the relevant people and let them express their opinions.
An effective meeting will form ideas and reach conclusions and decisions.
All of these can be a base for follow-up steps which will form a plan.
An effective will have an impact and results in the right direction aligned to your targets.
3. How long should a work meeting last?
Meetings will always use their allocated time.
As we learned from Parkinson’s law: “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”.
The same is true for meetings.
The amount of time you allocate to a meeting is the time the meeting will take.
The problem with meetings is that you can also delay it a bit and also schedule another one to follow up.
So, to have efficient meetings — you need to schedule meetings for the exact amount of time the topic needs, actually a little less…
Don’t use the default meeting time in your email app — 30 min or an hour.
Set the amount of time that you think you need for the topic.
Another point is to set the meeting to end a little before the designated time, for instance:
My outlook calendar by default schedules a meeting for 25min if I want 30 min and 50 min if I want an hour.
That way you give people some time between meetings to refresh and get to the other meeting.
Also, it gives a little time buffer on the meeting so if you go over a bit, you are still on time.
4. What are the Criteria for having a meeting? Is this a meeting or not?
The third Mindset shift you need is to stop having meetings on the wrong things.
This is obviously the very first question that you need to consider before hitting the “Create New Meeting” button.
We set many meetings which do not require a meeting, and these are doomed to be bad meetings.
Meetings have a very dedicated target.
If the meeting doesn’t meet one of the targets we talked about before for:
- Having an open discussion.
- Decision-making.
- Form joint plans.
- Brainstorming as a group.
- Create relationships.
Don’t have the meeting!
The two main ones you should remove from your day-to-day are:
Status update meetings — do not require a meeting, they can very easily be done over email or in a specific tool that supports dashboards.
Urgent questions — There is a little device called “A Phone” you can use it to call the exact person you want to hear the answer from.
Meetings vs emails VS Instant Messaging
These operations also do not require a meeting and can very well be done by emails, phone calls, Slack messages, Jira tickets, IM messages, and whatever other tool you use:
- Reminders.
- Asking questions that are not urgent.
- Minor issues which are not urgent.
- Filling paperwork.
- Issues Tracking.
- Align on Deadlines and due dates.
- Check-ins.
5. You decide when people set meetings for you.
This is probably the most important one of all changes.
If you treat your calendar as your to-do list (then first read why TODO lists are bad for productivity), your calendar will be full except when you allow it.
When people will try to set a meeting, they will only have the slots that you allowed them to have.
If they try to set one on a slot that is already booked — it opens the door to a discussion of:
“I have a conflict — Am I really needed in the meeting?”
“Maybe someone else in the meeting is already enough”
How to save a lot of time at work by running efficient meetings?
One of the key aspects of turning a meeting into productive, is by using best practices to make it efficient as possible.
For that, I recommend you read this article.
which is full of practical tips and best practices.
Conclusion
I hated meetings.
These timewasters and context switchers — ruined my workdays and the quality of my work.
After 1000s of meetings and learning the subject — the above mindset changes had made me understand how to use meetings correctly.
And dare I say… even see the value in them.
Try it, change your mindset to meetings, one shift at a time, and see how you stop being angry at your calendar and just might even like it…
If you liked this article there are many more in my Productivity Blog:
https://www.productivateme.com/
Now go get Productivated :-)
