The New Corner Office: Map your meetings

A little strategy can make work feel more doable

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,
the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the
new world of work, where location and hours are more
flexible than in the past. Today's tip is to be
strategic about your meetings. By understanding exactly when they'll be happening,

(00:27):
you can be better prepared, manage your energy, and figure
out what times you can do non meeting work too.
Collaboration is amazing in theory, none of us has all
the answers in practice, though, what it means is that
most jobs and big organizations involve a lot of meetings.

(00:47):
This tendency to schedule meetings about everything is exacerbated in
a world where lots of people are working from home.
You can't see your colleague to casually ask for his
feedback on your proposal, schedule a formal meeting to get
his feedback, and thus meetings proliferate. Some of that is inevitable,
but by being a bit more mindful and strategic, you

(01:10):
can manage your meetings better. Here's what you do. By
the time you start work on Monday morning, take a
good look at your calendar for the week. When do
you have meetings. Some are no doubt weekly recurring sorts,
and some are one off types. Figure out how many
hours you currently have booked into meetings. Then do a

(01:31):
little triage. Do all these meetings have to happen. We've
talked in previous episodes about seeing what can be canceled,
ask for agendas for anything that seems iffy. Anything that
is a one on one check in might be better
approached as a quick phone call, So go ahead and
make that call. The goal is to reduce the overall

(01:51):
meeting load. Then, once you're clear on what's staying, figure
out what you need to prepare for. When people get busy,
they just start tromping from one thing to the next,
like middle schoolers changing classes. Here's my two o'clock, my
three o'clock, my four o'clock. This can be a harrowing
experience if you suddenly realize that the three o'clock involves

(02:13):
a complicated pitch to a not entirely friendly audience, or
if you're going to be asked at the two o'clock
for your opinion on a rather lengthy document. So figure
out when you can prepare for anything that requires preparation,
and mark these times on your calendar and finally take
a step back and look at the landscape. Not all

(02:34):
meetings for the week will be set by Monday morning,
of course, but when you see what time is available,
you can decide what time is good for meetings and
what isn't. For instance, if you've got no meetings on
Wednesday morning and two in the afternoon, I'd suggest that
if someone asks to meet on Wednesday, you offer any
remaining afternoon slots that leaves the morning open for individual

(02:55):
focused work. One of the most aggravating parts of organizational
life is that people feel their schedules are chopped up
they never have time to achieve that state of flow.
Some of this is inevitable, but some is self imposed.
You don't have to give Wednesday morning away unless there's
a really good reason. The upside of mapping out your

(03:17):
meetings is that you can approach the week feeling far
more confident and ready for what's to come. You'll steward
your energy appropriately, you'll perform better in the meetings that happen,
and there may be fewer of them, and they'll happen
at times that work better for you. Given how draining
meetings can be. That's really the best possible outcome. So today,

(03:39):
approach your calendar with this strategic spirit, map your meetings
for the week, and see what you can do to
make your work life feel more doable. In the meantime,
this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's to succeeding
in the New Corner office. The New Corner is a

(04:00):
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