🎒 Microlesson

🪞 Reflect

When was the last time you had a meeting that took up only the time it was scheduled for on the calendar?

💡 Concept

Say you have a 25-minute meeting on the calendar. 

That meeting takes up more than 25 minutes of your time. 

You also spend time: 

• preparing for the meeting, including doing any assigned prework or doing research on your own 

• recording any notes or action items that were not documented during the meeting

• sending follow-up messages 

• completing the work assigned to you in the meeting 

Unfortunately, the time you need to accomplish all these tasks doesn’t get automatically added to your calendar every time someone sends a virtual invite. That means that you have to do it yourself. 

Adding buffer time before and after meetings helps you manage your schedule by allowing time for you to mentally prepare and follow through on related tasks. 

You and your team may already be scheduling 25- or 50-minute meetings to allow for a few minutes of buffer time between back-to-back virtual meetings. Take it a step further and proactively block off additional time so you can manage all your meeting-related tasks. 

🎬 Take Action

• For every meeting that lands on your calendar, calculate the amount of time you’ll need to accomplish the meeting-related tasks listed above.

• Block that time on your calendar. You’ll then have a visual representation of just how much time is spent on meeting-related tasks. It will also keep people from booking yet another meeting on your calendar during that time. 

• When scheduling meetings for others, include an estimate of the amount of time needed to complete meeting-related tasks such as prework. 

✅ Check In

🧠 Keep Learning

Learn more about how to reduce time spent in meetings in Async at Work. 

🎁 Learn with your team!

Refer our weekly microlessons to your team members to learn as a group! Just follow the instructions in the section below to get started.