How to Spend Much Less Time in Meetings and Much More on What Matters
How to Flourish newsletter #7 | drjonbeale.com
Highlights:
Why it’s important to reduce the time you’re spending in meetings
Two key questions to ask about any meeting
A five-step method for cutting down your meetings by at least 50%
Watch | Listen 👇
What would you do if you had an additional 27 hours a week?
Spend more time with friends and family? Exercise and sleep more? Start that hobby you’ve always longed to try? Read those books that have gathered dust on your shelf for years? Or… all these?
Or, you could work a four-day week. Maybe even a three-day week. And more of that time could be spent doing meaningful work.
Meetings are a huge time suck. Most of us have way too many. And most are a waste of time. Even useful meetings are usually way too long.
Most of us spend far more time than necessary in meetings (credit: iStock photo)
The good news is, there’s an effective method of massively reducing the time you spend in meetings while increasing productivity, efficiency and effectiveness – both for yourself and your team. This method can also improve team-building, even though you reduce the time you spend in team meetings.
Most importantly, getting this time back can significantly improve your health, happiness and well-being, because you can put the time to much better use: investing it in your relationships, health and activities you love.
I’ve developed this method through coaching or training thousands of clients (over 700 of whom I’ve coached one-to-one), many of whom had enormous meeting schedules when we started working together. Some had over 30 hours a week of meetings. Every client who has implemented this method has significantly reduced the time they spend in meetings. Some cut a schedule of over 30 hours of meetings a week down to a maximum of three a week.
That’s a reduction of at least 27 hours a week. Imagine what you could do with an additional 27 hours a week. Sleep deprived? Not any more. More quality time with your loved ones? Plenty. Got time to workout today? Sure. Enough time to finally read War and Peace? Absolutely.
Freeing up more time to do things you love (credit: Jacob Lund)
When we reduce meeting time, we also reduce the time associated with them: scheduling, writing agendas, circulating minutes, following up on actions and so on. In Slow Productivity (2024), Cal Newport points out that we tend to massively underestimate the ‘administrative overhead’ associated with meetings, which can take at least as much time as the meetings. So cutting back on meetings could also get you back much of the time taken up with administrative overhead.
The following method is described for people in a position to make decisions about meetings. For those of you not in this position – for example, it’s up to your boss whether to cancel a meeting – I’ll post a future blog on how to most effectively communicate to the meeting’s decision-maker that this method is followed.
After describing the method, I offer responses to common objections.
Step 1: Cancel all unnecessary meetings
To figure out if a meeting is necessary, ask yourself:
Does this meeting need to happen? In other words, will anything bad happen if we don’t meet?
Is there a strong chance something very good will happen if we do meet?
If the answer to both is “no”, cancel the meeting.
Step 2: Reduce the length of all meetings
For meetings that remain, ask: What’s the minimum amount of time we need to meet to achieve the meeting’s objective?
There’s rarely a need to meet for longer than half an hour. That’s enough time for a team to make decisions and agree on key actions.
Default all your meetings to a maximum of 30 minutes. Only meet for longer if there’s an exceptionally good reason – for example, it’s your first meeting with a high-stakes client.
Don’t stop there. Any 30-minute meeting can be done in 25. So, if you’ve reduced a meeting to 30 minutes, now reduce it to 25.
Google Calendar has a useful function called ‘Speedy Meetings’, which shortens your preset meeting time (the default time Google Calendar will schedule for meetings) by 5 minutes. So if your preset meeting time is 30 minutes, your meetings will automatically schedule for 25 in your calendar.
‘Speedy Meetings’ in Google Calendar
Don’t stop here, either. If you can reduce a meeting to 25 minutes, you might be able to reduce it to 15. If the meeting is a ‘check in’ with a small team, or it’s to make a decision on an important but not complex issue, you can probably do it in 15.
To identify whether a meeting can be reduced to 15 minutes, ask yourself slightly different versions of the two questions earlier:
Will anything bad happen if we reduce this meeting to 15 minutes?
Is there a strong chance something very good will happen if we meet for longer?
If the answer to both (3) and (4) is “no”, shorten the meeting to 15 minutes.
That 30-minute meeting has now been halved.
Step 3: Reduce the frequency of all meetings
Many people have recurring weekly meetings for no other reason than it’s common practice or to ‘check in’. These aren’t good reasons to meet.
Meet if there’s a need to: for instance, a problem that can be solved much more effectively over synchronous discussion rather than back and forth asynchronous messages.
Take a look at your recurring meetings. Now ask yourself another variant of the two questions earlier:
Will anything bad happen if we only meet half as often?
Is there a strong chance something very good will happen if we continue to meet as often as we currently are?
If the answer to both (5) and (6) is “no”, reduce the recurring meeting by half.
So:
If you meet twice a week, reduce it to once a week.
If you meet weekly, reduce it to every other week.
If you meet every other week, reduce it to monthly.
Step 4: Schedule all meetings outside your optimal focus time
What time of day do you focus best?
This is when you absolutely shouldn’t schedule meetings.
Meetings are rarely occasions when we do work that requires our optimal focus or exerts our cognitive capacities to their limit. They’re usually occasions for completing logistical tasks, agreeing or following up on actions, and receiving updates from team members (the majority of which could be completed asynchronously).
Focus best in the mornings? Don’t schedule any morning meetings, unless you have no other option. Protect that time for your most important work.
I focus best in the mornings and prefer to exercise earlier in the day, so I don’t schedule any meetings before 2pm, unless I have no other option. An example of ‘no other option’ would be an important meeting with a client based in Australia, where, given the timezone differences, we’d need to meet in the morning or evening when I’m in the UK.
Step 5: Change the form of all meetings to what saves most time
Only your most important meetings need ever be in person – for example, for off-sites or to meet with new high-stakes clients.
You might also enjoy these meetings more because they’re in person. I often love meeting in person. But face-to-face meetings take much longer, given the commuting and that it’s usually weird to dash off after meeting in person for 30 minutes. So, limit these only to those where there’s excellent reason to meet face-to-face.
Even meetings with your most important clients and colleagues needn’t be in person every time: it’s fine to only occasionally meet face-to-face, and those meetings might be more effective and fun if the expectation isn’t that you meet in person every time.
Meeting in person is often great. But limit it to your most important meetings. And you don’t need to meet in person every time.
Follow this process to change the form of meetings to save time:
If the meeting is in-person, ask yourself:
Can it be done over Zoom, without any significant negative impact on outcomes?
If the meeting can be done over Zoom, ask yourself:
Can it be done over a phone call, without any significant negative impact on outcomes?
If it can, you can go for a walk, rather than sitting at your screen for yet more hours.
If the meeting can be done over a phone call, ask yourself:
Can it be done over an email or message without any significant negative impact on outcomes?
If the answer’s “yes”, you’ve just cancelled the meeting.
Replies to common objections
1. “But… surely reducing meetings will reduce productivity?”
No – it’s more likely to increase productivity.
You’re most productive when you’re doing what Cal Newport calls ‘deep work’: work that requires you to focus, without distractions, for a significant time, on a cognitively demanding task that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limits. The activities you do during deep work, Newport writes, ‘create new value [and] improve your skill’ (Deep Work, p. 3).
Meetings are rarely occasions for deep work. You can do deep work in teams, but this generally requires each team member to work in silence, checking in occasionally for feedback or to contribute a completed sub-task to a task the team is collectively solving. But if the team’s doing that, there’s no need to be in a meeting – they can do this asynchronously, checking in via a communication platform like Slack.
Meetings take time to organise, even if you optimise the process using meeting apps like Calendly (which I highly recommend), and there’s an administrative overhead associated with any meeting. Again, this adds to the time taken away from getting work done, so reduces productivity.
Optimise the process for organising meetings using apps like Calendly
2. “But… meetings are great for team-building”
Some meetings are. Most aren’t. Many are counterproductive for team-building, because the time spent in meetings and the administrative overhead creates additional stress.
Less meeting time gives you time to plan far more effective team-building exercises, like off-sites or staff socials.
If you want a regular time when team members can meet with you or get together, schedule 15-30 minutes every week or two for office hours, where colleagues are free to meet with you or each other if they want to, with no expectation that they have do. Now you’ve given them the autonomy to meet.
Everyone in the meeting will appreciate the additional time they gain from less meetings and the autonomy of being able to check in if they need to.
Time and autonomy. Those are great for team-building, not more required meetings.
You can engage more effectively in team building by reducing meeting time
If you’re in the early stages of launching a business and getting to know your team, regular and reasonably long meetings can be beneficial. But even then, try to keep them as short and infrequent as possible: it’ll improve the team’s efficiency and effectiveness, and in the early stages of a business, everyone’s schedules are even more packed than usual. Again, freeing up as much time as possible will be appreciated by everyone.
3. “But… what’s the point in cutting meetings from 30 minutes to 25 – it only saves five minutes?”
Five minutes is a long time if you’ve got hours of back-to-back meetings. Now everyone at least has a chance to grab a coffee and use the toilet.
These five-minute chunks quickly add up if you’ve got a packed meeting schedule. Getting that back over six 30-minute meetings gives you an additional 30 minutes. That’s time you can use to complete some of the administrative overhead associated with the meetings, which you might otherwise be working late to complete.
In a world where ‘time famine’ has become the norm, getting back five minutes here and there is extremely valuable, and it adds up fast.
4. “But… I can’t possibly reduce my appointments with my clients – they pay me for my time.”
I’m not suggesting this method be applied to commitments such as teaching classes, coaching calls, therapy sessions, giving presentations, etc. For these and various other commitments, a reduction in time usually results in a reduction in value: a client is, for example, paying you to give a presentation for an hour and answer questions for 30 minutes, or coach them for an hour a week, and so on.
This method is to be applied to meetings: occasions where at least two people meet to discuss work-related matters, in person, online or over the phone.
5. “But… I’m not in a position to make decisions about my meetings – my boss is.”
I’ll post a future blog on what you can do to convince your boss to follow the method above.
The Takeaway
Everyone complains about not having enough time. Meetings are a massive time suck. We can alleviate time famine by significantly reducing the amount, duration and frequency of meetings.
Try the five-step strategy above to reduce meeting time by at least half. You could get back several hours a week – perhaps even several days.
How much time did you get back following the above method?
Have you found any other strategies effective for reducing meeting time?
I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments, or any other thoughts you have about reducing meeting time!
drjonbeale.com | @drjonbeale
Recommended resources
Books:
Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape the 9-5, Work Anywhere and Join the New Rich (Crown Publishers, 2009 [2007])Cal Newport, Slow Burnout (Penguin, 2024)
Peer-reviewed articles:Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without
Hylco Nijp, et al., ‘Systematic review on the association between employee worktime control and work-non-work balance, health and well-being, and job-related outcomes’ (Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 2012)
Leslie Perlow, ‘The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time’ (Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999)
Media articles:
Caroline Castrillon, ‘How To Reduce Unnecessary Meetings At Work’ (Forbes, 5 Jan 2023)
Jacqueline Howard, ‘How to fight “time famine” and boost your happiness’ (CNN Health, 28 Feb 2018)
Ruth Ogden, ‘5 simple, science-backed ways to get more time in your day and beat burnout’ (BBC Science Focus, 11 May 2024)
Leslie Perlow, Constance Noonan Hadley & Eunice Eun, ‘Stop the Meeting Madness: How to free up time for meaningful work’ (Harvard Business Review, 2017)
Bryan Robinson, ‘Is Time Famine Starving You? How To Satisfy Your Hunger For More’ (Forbes, 15 Sept 2019)
Podcasts:
‘Why Meetings Suck and How to Fix Them’, Re-Thinking with Adam Grant, 2023