Sometimes I’ll just be sitting there minding my own business, when all of the sudden, WHAM! — something comes along that’s so obvious that it results in a “Eureka!” moment (it’s happened twice in the last couple of weeks, so expect another post just like this soon). This time the WHAM came while crawling through my RSS reader, when I found a blog post titled “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule“.

If you’ve read very far on this site, you’ll know I despise meetings. Horribly. I view meetings as a productivity sink; there’s no way I can be more productive in a meeting, and, many times, I am completely unproductive in a meeting.  I would hear people talking about their day being fully booked — and are excited about it! I couldn’t grasp why someone would be excited about it. These same people believe there isn’t a single problem a meeting can’t solve, when, in my mind, meetings only create problems.  Why are my observations about meetings so disjointed with these other people.  Is there something wrong with me? With them?  The answer is “neither.”

The “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” eureka! moment made me realize that there are two distinctly different types of people when it comes to meetings.  Worse, neither side understands the other. Nor do they try.

In order for makers to help managers understand, we must communicate with them. We must let them know how a single meeting could potentially ruin an entire day. Hopefully you can find a manager that has, hopefully recently, been a maker. They will become your champion. Remind them of the joy of a meeting-less day and how much they were able to get done, and that satisfaction that provided.

You’re not going to be able to get out of all meetings, unfortunately.  There are two things that can be done to assist in your goal of unfettered making time: 1) Minimize your meetings, and 2) Coalesce your meetings.

Minimize your meetings

Minimize both the number and length of meetings. Ask if you really need to be in the meeting, and explain the benefits of what you’ll be able to accomplish if you don’t attend. Do not fall into the trap of the default hour meeting time. Challenge the meeting organizer to reduce a meeting down to 30 minutes, or to 45 if that doesn’t work. Just because your meeting software defaults to hour-long meetings doesn’t mean you have to follow their cue.

Coalesce your meetings

Think of your calendar as a hard disk defragger display. Get the meetings to all form consecutive blocks such that you don’t have an hour meeting, an hour break, and then another hour of meeting.  That hour break in the middle is useless because you’re not going to be able to really get up to speed before you need to start slowing down for the next meeting. Hopefully you can coalesce all your meetings together in the morning, so you’ll have a wide-open afternoon to work. (Or maybe that’s just me; I wouldn’t like my prospects for the day if I knew my entire afternoon was filled with meetings.)

Move meetings to natural boundaries, such as the hour before or after lunch. If I know there’s a meeting scheduled at 2, I’ll postpone my lunch until 1:15 or so. Don’t allow a meeting to fall right in the middle of your morning or afternoon. However, do not try to create a designated “meeting zone” during the day. Some managers will think all available time within that block of time will need to be filled with meetings. Instead, create a “do not meet” time in which meetings cannot be scheduled, allowing the makers to make and the managers to plan their next batch of  meetings.

Understanding the manager mindset

Managers usually schedule meetings to get information of one type or another. Here are a few quick ideas to provide information without having a meeting, to shorten meetings, or to get uninvited to meetings.

Suggest an alternative to a meeting. For example, if you’re asked if you’re going to be free for a meeting, respond by asking to talk about it now. Without the formality of the meeting, and the inclusion of  unnecessary people (who tend to elongate the meeting), you’ll spend less time addressing the issue.

Try a preemptive strike. If you’re scheduled for a meeting, and you see only one issue for you during the meeting (you only attend meetings with an agenda, right?), go directly to the meeting owner’s office/cube, and give them the information they need, then excuse yourself from the meeting. Follow up with an email to all the invitees.

Do not attend a meeting without an agenda. As mentioned above, you should never go to a meeting that doesn’t have a published agenda. Without it, how do you know when you’ve answered the organizer’s questions, or fulfilled their need to know? By balking at attending an agenda-less meeting, you’re actually helping the manager get in the habit of creating agendas, which will be a win for everyone.  Once you have the agenda, become an agenda hawk. If conversation goes off topic, bring attention to it and get the meeting back on course, even if it’s not your meeting.

If all else fails, become a pain in the ass. If you’re continually getting invites to unproductive meetings from a single individual, it might become necessary to go negative. Start coming up with action items for the manager, forcing them to look through the eyes of a maker for a bit. Go medieval on the meeting’s ass by being a stickler for starting and ending times, and for sticking to the agenda (see above).

Hopefully with these ideas, your meetings will become less frequent, and those you still have will be less of a waste of time.