Dealing with meeting overload

How to reclaim 2.5 hours a week from needless meetings

Every morning when I start work I look at my calendar and try to cancel a meeting. If I don’t have any meetings that I own and can cancel I try to get out of someone else’s meeting. If I can do either of those things I have started my day off with a win.

You see people don’t value their time very much.

They value yours even less.

These people will happily throw 30 minutes on a calendar to talk about something that is inconsequential or could be solved over email. Sometimes people don’t know who the decision maker is so they throw a whole bunch of people on to make sure someone will get the message. Often, you see the invite pop on your calendar and out of habit you click accept.

That is where you go wrong. You don’t have to accept. In fact your default should be no. No, isnt rude, in fact it may be the most polite thing to do. If you can say no in a way that points them to the information or the decision maker, you have made their job easier.

However, if you failed that test, you have not lost. You can still change your mind. Which is why I have the rule to look at my calendar and try to cancel or decline at least one meeting that day. The exercise itself is cleansing because if you cant cancel you have just one by one validated that each of your meetings is important.

Just because a meeting is required doesn’t mean it is high value. I will talk later about redeeming a meeting by trying to pull the value out of it even if you don’t see it right away. But cancel when you can to increase your signal to noise ratio.

That’s it. One simple tip to make your day a little brighter.

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