A few tips I wrote to a friend who was having trouble taking care of truly important projects at work due to the many and lengthy meetings he had to be a part of:
-Try, as much as in your power, to group meetings together, next to each other on your calendar. Better to have them all on Tuesday, for instance, than spread throughout the week. You may know from experience that one meeting or even an interruption in the middle of block of time can kill the productivity during that time, making a three hour block of time about as good as one hour, in terms of creative energy and productivity. So plan your time intentionally. Don't fall victim to a schedule that has random holes in it decreasing your productivity by orders of magnitude.
-Try to determine when you are most mentally energetic during the day (it's probably the morning) and don't have meetings or check e-mail during that time. That way you are devoting the most "fertile" hours of your day to work where it can have the most pay off ("creative work" as it's called"). Then try to be involved in meetings during times that are lower energy for you - perhaps afternoons - because you likely don't need as much energy for a meeting as you do to get some real solid work done on a project. Getting quality work done needs quality and undivided time. Answering quick e-mails or voicemails can be done (usually) with very little stress or thought, thus there is little reason to take care of such when your mind is primed for pumping out high quality work. When I write, or study the Bible, want to take care of the day's most important project, all these happen first thing each day and are usually done by 11am, giving a hearty sense of accomplishment and momentum by lunchtime.
-If you do calendar sharing at work, intentionally block off parts of your schedule a week or two in advance such that you are scheduling an appointment "with yourself", basically time devoted to a particular task or project and you will let nothing get in the way. On other people's calendars it will just show up as busy and they will know that that is off limits for scheduling a meeting or appointment. This can also help for self-accountability. For instance, tomorrow I've blocked off all day to devote to preparing a talk I'm to deliver the following week. It's a meeting with myself when other things, be it phone calls, emails, other work, etc. will not be allowed to invade. The emails can wait and if someone absolutely needs me tomorrow they will call twice or text.
For more on how to make the most of meetings, I recommend this book:
Read This Before Our Next Meeting
Hope these are helpful for you. I'd love to hear some of your ideas for increasing your productivity at work and not falling victim to meetings or the tyranny of the urgent.
-Try, as much as in your power, to group meetings together, next to each other on your calendar. Better to have them all on Tuesday, for instance, than spread throughout the week. You may know from experience that one meeting or even an interruption in the middle of block of time can kill the productivity during that time, making a three hour block of time about as good as one hour, in terms of creative energy and productivity. So plan your time intentionally. Don't fall victim to a schedule that has random holes in it decreasing your productivity by orders of magnitude.
-Try to determine when you are most mentally energetic during the day (it's probably the morning) and don't have meetings or check e-mail during that time. That way you are devoting the most "fertile" hours of your day to work where it can have the most pay off ("creative work" as it's called"). Then try to be involved in meetings during times that are lower energy for you - perhaps afternoons - because you likely don't need as much energy for a meeting as you do to get some real solid work done on a project. Getting quality work done needs quality and undivided time. Answering quick e-mails or voicemails can be done (usually) with very little stress or thought, thus there is little reason to take care of such when your mind is primed for pumping out high quality work. When I write, or study the Bible, want to take care of the day's most important project, all these happen first thing each day and are usually done by 11am, giving a hearty sense of accomplishment and momentum by lunchtime.
-If you do calendar sharing at work, intentionally block off parts of your schedule a week or two in advance such that you are scheduling an appointment "with yourself", basically time devoted to a particular task or project and you will let nothing get in the way. On other people's calendars it will just show up as busy and they will know that that is off limits for scheduling a meeting or appointment. This can also help for self-accountability. For instance, tomorrow I've blocked off all day to devote to preparing a talk I'm to deliver the following week. It's a meeting with myself when other things, be it phone calls, emails, other work, etc. will not be allowed to invade. The emails can wait and if someone absolutely needs me tomorrow they will call twice or text.
For more on how to make the most of meetings, I recommend this book:
Read This Before Our Next Meeting
Hope these are helpful for you. I'd love to hear some of your ideas for increasing your productivity at work and not falling victim to meetings or the tyranny of the urgent.
2 comments:
One thing that I've found helpful is to find ways to maximize the time around a meeting while you're mainly waiting or commuting. Having material to work on, a Kindle to do a little reading, Emails to take care of, etc.
Ah, yes. Good stuff, Loren!
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