It fills me with dread when I receive an email for a meeting that lasts more than an hour. Why would a meeting last for an hour, unless it’s a workshop or a detailed design meeting and if it was – stop calling it a meeting.

What’s worse to get an email booking in a meeting at 5pm, I wouldn’t mind if it was a final-end-of-day get together but it turns to be a project initiation or kick-off session.

Meetings should be targeted, quick and justifiable. Ilya Pozin thinks so in his recent article ‘The No. 1 Way to Kill Productivity‘ where he states that “most people are addicted to meetings” 

Apparently the Centre for Economics and Business Research reported that office workers feel that half the time they spend in meetings is wasted based on spend an average of four hours per week in meetings. 

A number of tips that are mentioned include :

1. Reviewing time need in the meeting and reduce if necessary 

    Consider running meetings like a ‘Scrum‘ 

2. Keep the size of the meeting small 

    There is no need to invite all your mates to the meeting.

3. Determine the possible outcomes from the meeting before your begin and share them 

     This will prevent wasting time.

4. Call it what it is 

      If it’s a meeting call it a meeting, if it’s a workshop or brain-storming session, don’t.

5. Don’t attend if you haven’t prepared

Have you ever thought about the word ‘meetings’ – are they places where you get to meet people you don’t know, I guess we should just call them ‘updates’ or ‘progress’ …

Photo credit: pkingDesign / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

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