Productivity Hack: Meetings
I’ve attended my fair share of meetings throughout my career. Code review meetings, feature planning meetings, scrum meetings, client meetings, urgent life-stopping bugs being reported meetings (to the customer the world must stop :).
Meetings are highly disruptive. People are most productive when they’re in the zone and uninterrupted. Meetings disrupt this workflow, and going back to a productive state often requires more time, and in that time another meeting can get scheduled adding toxicity to the rest of your day.
I have a rule. I only schedule meetings from 8AM-12PM. This serves a few purposes:
- Blocking all meetings together does not disrupt actual productivity.
- The brain needs to wake up and get going before getting into the zone. A morning full of meetings, with jabbering clients/customers is a great remedy.
- Eating lunch after a morning full of meetings prepares the body with the sustenance to get into the zone and get shit done.
Meetings are important. A killer project without communication is a recipe for failure. So here are some tech tips for scheduling meetings well.
- Always send out an invite. This eliminates e-mail/confirmation overhead. Asking your client if “we’re still on” is a waste of time when tools like Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook can automate that for you.
- Use a headset to take calls. This frees you to take notes on your computer. I like to use Google Docs or Evernote so my notes are stored in the cloud and accessible from any laptop or my iPhone.
- Send screenshots or videos beforehand if you are doing a demo. This might kill the element of surprise, but if you’re doing a demo over the phone, you’re either doing it wrong, or its not that important.
After meetings are over the rest of the day is yours. Use it wisely.
