How To Stop Wasting Time In Meetings: Do Your Meetings Kill Your Productivity?
Meetings are the heartbeat of any organization. And effective meetings are important for business success.
But how productive are your meetings? Are they killing your productivity? A productive meeting should reach a decision, solve a problem, reach an agreement, or create a common understanding among the participants.
An investigation by Atlassian on time wasted at work shows that on average professionals waste 31 hours every month 😲 for ineffective and unnecessary meetings. It is equal to 4 working days!
And the increased number of video calls accelerated the phenomenon of digital fatigue.
Time Wasters
Here is my list of time wasters:
- No one is in charge of the meeting
- No agenda or too many agenda items
- Lateness or going overtime
- Getting off topic
- Reviewing the last meeting for the people who weren't present
- The meeting that should have been an email
So How To Stop Wasting Time in Meetings?
#1 Determine who will lead the meeting
#2 Set an agenda
#3 Set a meeting time
#4 Invite the right people
#5 Delegate note-taking to technology
#6 Write a follow-up
#7 Avoid unnecessary meetings
🙋 Determine Who Will Lead The Meeting
The importance of having a designated meeting leader is crucial. Whether it is the leader who initiated the meeting or another member of the group, it is important to have someone in charge of setting an agenda as well as keeping the meeting on track.
🎯 Set An Agenda
Every meeting needs to have an agenda. It may sound obvious, but no agenda = no structure = no focus = useless meeting. Following a detailed agenda can reduce meeting times up to 80%!
The agenda should be set out as a clear list of items to be discussed so everyone involved knows what they’re coming to the meeting for and when it’s going to end.
Consider your meeting agenda to be your meeting’s mission statement. It helps everyone stay on track and keeps the meeting moving smoothly toward it’s end goal. It also saves time by avoiding the “where are we now?” questions that come up when people are trying to figure out what the meeting’s focus is.
Read also "A Short Guide On Writing Meeting Agenda".
⏱️ Set A Meeting Time
One of the best ways to increase productivity and get more done is to hold shorter meetings. Many of us grew up with the idea that meetings should last 60 minutes. And while it might seem harmless, allowing discussions to drag on for too long can actually be quite detrimental.
The average length should be 30 minutes. At longer meetings, you are likely to find that half of your attendees are “lost” or tired. But of course meeting length really depends on the type of meeting.
It's important to have a "time reminder ", especially if you have a busy schedule and jump from one call to another. For Google Meet you can check out Call Timer. It works as a browser extension, adds a timer, and allows you to track how long you’ve been on a Google Meet call.
👥 Invite The Right People
“Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value.. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time” — Elon Musk told Tesla employees.
One of the main Elon Musk’s productivity rules — Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing!
So make sure that you invite only right people to a meeting. Understand who needs to be present at the meeting to cover the topics and questions that you are expecting for an outcome.
📝 Delegate Note-taking To Technology
It’s hard to take notes, to-dos, and follow up on action items when you are at the call. Our brain can not focus on different types of work simultaneously. So we are not able to follow the conversation while we are manually taking notes.
We can't rely on our memory either. The biggest lie we tell ourselves: "I don't need to write that down, I'll remember it". Studies show that we remember only 20% of what we hear and 80% of information mentioned during the meeting is lost 😲 forever!
Use tools like Noty. It transforms Google Meet calls into notes and summaries. You can stay fully engaged in conversation while it is capturing everything. It also integrates with Slack, Google Doc and allows sharing via links and email, so you can easily share conversations with others.
Everyone will be on the same page: everything is written down, and key meeting items and outcomes will not disappear into thin air once the meeting is over.
✉️ Write A Follow-up
Ineffective or poorly organized meetings is one of the most common meeting bugbears resulting in unclear actions leading to confusion for 43%.
Recapping of actions and decisions at the end of the meeting is crucial, otherwise, everyone can go away with a different understanding of who’s responsible for what and by when. Make sure that you don’t let arrangements disappear into thin air once the meeting was over.
Btw, people who use a meeting productivity tool like Noty are more likely to follow up on meeting action items.
🙅♀️ Avoid Unnecessary Meetings
Don’t schedule meetings that can simply be an email. One of the most common things we do in meetings is to simply share information. That’s it. So why do we continue to do such thing day in and day out? We need to change our habits and set meetings with a purpose, and make sure it’s a purpose that makes sense.
Before you schedule a meeting, always ask yourself: What is the purpose of this meeting? Could this meeting have been an email?
