The third thing that can waste your time are meetings. Have you ever gone to a meeting where all people did was just chat? Fifty percent of meetings are a waste of time. One reason may be because there’s no focus. Two, they end up just being social events. Or three, there’s many people in the meeting that don’t need to be in the meeting and they consume extra time.
There needs to be a return on investment for that meeting. Holding a meeting is not free time. If you take one hour of five peoples’ times you have just cost the company whatever those peoples’ wages were for that hour. You also cost them whatever those people could have gotten done in productivity. It’s called “lost opportunity cost”.
So you have their time they spent in the meeting, plus the additional cost of whatever they didn’t do because they were there. So think about what it costs to hold a meeting. If you don’t really need to hold the meeting, then don’t do it! Do not hold a meeting just because, “Oh it’s Tuesday, and Tuesday is meeting day, so we’re going to sit around and drink coffee for three hours and waste time.”
This is a great ways to actually add significant time to your day. Want to get that free hour I was talking about? Shorten your meetings or if meetings aren’t essential call them off. It will absolutely save you time. You need to ask yourself the question “Is this meeting really necessary?” If so, hold it. If not, do it another time. Avoid it if it’s not essential.
Agenda Makes a Difference
If a meeting is essential, have an agenda. Any meeting that is more than five minutes needs to have an agenda so everybody knows why we’re here and what we’re doing. First we’re going to do this. We’re going to spend ten minutes on it. Second we’re going to do this. We’ll have fifteen minutes on that. We’ll do that next; that should only take two or three minutes, etc. You list out what the meeting is about and close approximate times to spend on each item. That way you can keep the meeting on track.
If something takes priority and begins to take longer than the allotted time you have to make a decision. Whoever’s managing the meeting needs to decide “are we going to stay on that topic or are we going to go to our next item?”
Make certain in a meeting to not waste time. Cover the most important parts first. Then if there is time you can cover other things or you can drop them. But get the most important things done first. At the end of your meeting make certain that you summarize what’s going on so you have some closure.
Keep control of the meeting. Make sure it’s moving forward and that notes are taken. Also, whoever needs to have the notes, should get them within the next working day. Circulate notes or minutes, within 24 hours after any meeting.