How to balance between meetings and individual work? What are your ideas?
Gaurav Goyal
63 replies
Sometimes I am in meetings the whole day and realize nothing much has happened by eod. How can I balance this?
Replies
Parth Pareek@parthpareek
Meetings are a necessary evil. It’s easy to feel you haven’t gotten anything done, if you do not categorize meetings as work.
Here’s a few tips that work well for me:
- Plan your week on Sunday evening (week goals/broad tasks)
- Review meetings: make sure they have an agenda/jot down your talking points/expected outcomes from the convo
- Create a master list of tasks and block time on the calendar
- Review progress EOD and plan the following day
- Review EOW and repeat
Timeblocking helps set expectations from the task/time commitment. Start small, you’ll get over time.
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Blocking one day in the weeks for strictly meetings only and blocking few days for strict no meetings .
@bijal_dave Yeah that's seems to be a nice solution.
@bijal_dave So you say 'no' to meetings on the other days?
@gauravgoyal_gg on the other days I'd prefer blocking 2 hours just for meetings . So if any meeting is to happen ,it happens during that time
I tend to dedicate my mornings to deep work and take my meetings only in afternoons.
I thus reserve the periods of the day where I'm most focused to move forward with my own work and only exceptionally accept meetings on these slots.
@selin_anil Got it. I generally do stand-ups/scrums in the morning. But thinking that the opposite might help.
@selin_anil Great idea, do you wake up early to do this?
To set up boundaries, especially in time.
@busmark_w_nika Yeah. How do you do it?
@gauravgoyal_gg I scheduled 2-time frames during the day (3 and 3) that I dedicated to working. 3 hours for clients, and 3 hours on my projects. Some people make it 4 and 4, or 5:3. It is crucial to dedicate time to your project and to clients. When I work on my projects (I do it after the clients) I actually feel more energized and then my personal life after work is more fulfilled.
@busmark_w_nika Got it. This is a very nice practical solution.
Depends on your goals.
I'm imagining a scenario when someone is an employee/freelancer and struggles between work and his own side hustles.
If their goal is sooner rather than later to have their main/only source of income from his own projects, I suggest they will have to change priorities so that individual projects get more space and energy.
If this were me (and it was me) and I would want to be full time working on my projects, I would work for them when I am have my best energy, creativity and likelihood of arriving in flow.
Although I don't have meetings, what's should be important to note before you have a frequent meeting would be asking some questions:
1. What purpose does this meeting serve?
2. What happens if I miss a few meetings? What are the consequences, and how likely are they?
3. If I don't have this meeting, what can I get done?
You'll often notice that you often don't need as many meetings as you think. Checking on progress is important, but you should put trust in your team to produce results.
Also, you can also question how long do the meetings actually need to be. It's more than likely some of the time is eaten up by introductions and niceties or other subjects being covered. So if you could streamline meetings, that would also reduce the time taken.
@richard_gao2 Yeah that's right. Tough to implement though :)
I usually try to keep meetings together for example blocking either first half or second half for meeting so that I get a good stretch for work
Fewer meetings is better. We do not really have any, just ad-hoc one-on-one calls via Slack.
I plan to have all my meetings within a 3hr slot if possible and have the rest of the time to work on my personal task.
Meetings are essential for performance and quality control. So you just have to put up with it. Maybe you just need to create an environment in which you feel comfortable and that will increase your productivity. We have a whole article on our blog about how to do this, we encourage you to explore
@nick_mazikov Great. Can you share the blog here?
Blocking calendars for focus time and hinting when your working hours start and end. And if some people still don't get it, getting them convinced why keeping those time blocks for me is important and how this will increase my productivity and sanity, and how this will be good for the team and the company.
I've been doing the solopreneur thing for the last couple of years, but this was always a common problem or complaint in every company I've ever worked for. I think two things can help.
1) A cultural shift in the company to try and reduce unnecessary meetings. Good luck with this one lol.
2) Block out time for deep work. A meeting isn't always the most important thing. I think that's hard to recognize because once it's created it demands your immediate attention. Along with group chat and phone notifications, these are all things that we need to consciously say no to if we want to focus.
This is a challenge, as both are important. For me, I list my to-do work every day, also KOL is a good tool for managing teamwork.
Something I've recently started practicing is putting everything on my calendar. This includes not just meetings and work tasks, but also personal commitments such as lunch breaks and time with family.
Hope it helps you keep organized and become more productive. By finding a balance between meetings and individual work, you can stay productive and achieve a healthy work-life balance.
Try to reduce some meaningless meetings and talk about substantive issues as much as possible instead of meaningless discussions
Launching soon!
Be realistic and honest about how much time you need for individual work. Set boundaries when attending meetings and make sure to allot yourself enough time to focus on your work.
I have seen observing no meetings day at certain places.
Break up tasks by high priority, mid priority and low priority to complete individual work then schedule meetings during your slow hours/days.
Personally, I try to minimize and altogether avoid meetings that my presence is not crucial for. As a general rule of thumb, if all I need to do in a meeting is listen and not give any insights, I do not participate.
Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but I find it quite helpful when trying to determine if I need to attend.
Also, scheduling meetings for the shortest time possible is a very good practice. https://teamhood.com/productivit...
All you need is a plan for the day. That pretty much leaves me sorted