Want fewer meetings at work? Learn how to say no.

Not all decisions require a meeting in order to drive next steps, and too many meetings have way too many people to be effective.

Familiarize yourself with this flowchart before scheduling another meeting (source: https://shoulditbeameeting.com)

With so many new tools, apps, and plugins to make it easier to schedule meetings at work, it’s become too easy to steal your coworkers’ time.

Ever feel like all you do each day is bounce from meeting to meeting? And you only ever have time to get work done after-hours? You’re not alone. Most office workers spend at least 45% of their time in meetings.

There are essentially two ways to fix this — (1) organize fewer meetings and (2) attend fewer meetings as a participant.

Think twice before scheduling a meeting

There are few things that will kill a team’s velocity faster than meeting overload. So before scheduling your next meeting, ask yourself a few simple questions:

1. Does this decision require input from more than one other person?
2. Does the group need to talk about this together, at the same time?
3. Do you have to wait until you can find a mutual time for everyone to discuss later?

Unless you answered yes to all of the above questions, you probably don’t need to schedule a meeting to accomplish your goals. Here are some alternatives to consider:

• Email
• Chat
• Quick phone call
• Brief in-person conversation
• Shared document

The difference between these options and a more formal meeting is that you’ll likely end up including fewer people in the decision making process and it’ll probably get done more quickly (here’s why).

But if you answered yes to all of the above questions, be sure to follow best practices for running an effective meeting:

1. Create a clear, focused agenda (and distribute it ahead of the meeting)
2. Only invite people who are critical to the discussion
3. Keep the meeting as short as possible

You aren’t obligated to accept every meeting invite you get

That’s right — everyone can and should consider whether your attendance is truly required when you get added to meetings at work. Instead of blindly assuming you’re obligated to attend a meeting if your calendar says you’re free, you should feel empowered to question your attendance.

In order to vet incoming meeting invitations, you should ask the following questions to the meeting organizer (if you don’t already know the answers):

• What’s the goal of the meeting? (be very clear)
• What’s the agenda for the discussion? (make sure to review the agenda before meeting)
• Is your attendance crucial for the meeting to be successful?
• Is it possible to accomplish the goal via email?

If you absolutely must attend a meeting, you should do your best to ensure it’s successful.

In order to guide you on your journey to spend less time in meetings at work, we’ve created a fun and easy way to help you and your coworkers figure out if you really need to schedule another meeting.

Good luck!

Should It Be a Meeting?

If you have questions, comments, or just want to say hi, shoot a note to danny@ratethatmeeting.com — I’d love to hear from you.