Control your meetings and be in charge of your time
Did your first meeting today ruin the rest of your day? One of my readers shared how she struggles with meetings running over. She was frustrated by these delays causing her entire day to be re-prioritised.
Today, here’re my top tips to managing your meetings and consequently your time:
- Use a calendar to write down all meetings. It doesn’t matter if you use an electronic one (e.g. the one on your phone or Outlook on your computer) or a paper one (e.g. a Filofax). Just be consistent and use the same one all the time. Your office may demand you using an electronic one. If you prefer a paper-based calendar, consider the re-work it may mean for you.
- Factor in travel time. Not every meeting will be held at your office. How long will it take you to get to the meeting location and from there to your next event? You may want to include extra time to plan for any traffic jams, especially during peak hours.
- Add time to prepare for your meeting. Unless this is a meeting where you can just show up, set some time aside to gather documents, product samples or anything else you need. Get directions programmed into your phone or sat nav. If you need to complete any action items from the previous meeting, how long will you need to complete these? You may need to block your calendar more than once to finish these actions.
- Allow for extra time if taking another person with you. Are you attending the meeting with another colleague? Are you picking up a client or supplier and travel together to this meeting? They may not be ready when you need to leave and you should factor this in.
- Send out an agenda in advance. Knowing the objective of the meeting prior to its start allows every participant to prepare for the discussion, complete any assigned actions from last time and collect insights and questions for the discussion. The participants can also determine whether they’ll actually need to participate or if it can be delegated. You can also decide whether your participation is required when you receive a meeting invite!
- Allocate time for socialising before and after the business talk. In this region, we often spend time talking about general topics before getting down to business. What if one of the participants, for example, your client, wants you to join them for lunch? How will this impact your agenda and the rest of your day?
- Remind everyone of the objective for the meeting, the agenda and the time for each topic. At the beginning of the meeting, you may want to also remind the participants of any ground rules (e.g. no emailing during the meeting).
- Assign the taker of the meeting minutes. Having minutes of a meeting allows every participant to review the discussion, outcome and assigned tasks with action owner.
- Set a timer. (My favourite tool!) You can set the allocated time minus 2-3 minutes to wrap up the topics. One the alarm goes off, it’s time to finish the discussion.
- Park any topics if you can’t reach an agreement. Decide whether these will be discussed at the end of this meeting, time allowing, put onto the agenda for the next meeting or escalate to higher leadership for decision making.
- Remind everyone of the time. Depending on how much time has gone by, when finishing one agenda point is the right moment to remind participants of the remaining time. You can now also request for certain topics to be sped up, if necessary.
- Define the required actions. Assign action owners together with specific deadlines and ensure this is documented in the meeting notes.
- Close the meeting. Now that the meeting is over, use this opportunity to thank everyone for working within a potentially new meeting and time keeping format.
- Receive and review the meeting notes after the meeting. You can start the process of preparing for the next meeting as outlined above.
Setting a timer has been an incredible help for me during my meetings. Not only does it signal me the time passed but also makes the other participants aware and much more conscious. We often complain how busy we are, there’s not enough time in the day. This practice allows me to optimise the time allocated for the meeting.
How do you manage your time and your meetings? I’m curious to read what tips can you add to this list and help other readers of the Organised Life and Mind blog.
Okay, for me, it’s time to go and set up some meetings.
Until next time,
Agni