Try 40-minute meetings

Think beyond 30 or 60 minutes to shape a smarter schedule

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is that if you normally default to our
long meetings, try experimenting with forty minute ones instead. You
might be surprised at how much better your schedule feels.

(00:28):
Over years of studying people's schedules, I found that people
generally default to a certain length of meeting. For most people,
that's an hour. There's some people in organizations default to
thirty minutes. But it's all kind of strange if you
think about it. I mean, not all business or human
matters fit neatly into a sixty minutes segment of time.

(00:48):
Some stuff takes five minutes, some stuff takes all day.
But rather than ask how much time a given interaction
will require, whoever is doing the scheduling defaults to the default.
You ask for time on a person's calendar, and you
get sixty minutes. If everyone gets sixty minutes, though, you

(01:09):
wind up stacking these meetings on the hour, usually all
day long, and there's little time to do anything else
unless you're disciplined about leaving an hour or two open. Now,
to my mind, the best approach is to ask while
scheduling exactly what needs to be covered and how long
that will take. Then the meeting can be scheduled for

(01:30):
that length of time, whether it's five minutes, twenty minutes,
or ninety seven minutes. I also know that's probably not
going to happen, so instead, another idea is to set
your default at forty minutes. And here's why this might
be wise. There's very little that would normally be slotted
for sixty minutes that couldn't be done in forty There's

(01:52):
a lot of throat clearing and such in your average meeting.
A shorter time frame forces discipline, but even better, if
you schedule these meetings on the hour, you have twenty
minutes in between each one. If it runs a little over,
you're still on time. If it gets out when it's
supposed to, you have twenty minutes to work on other things,
which is enough time to actually do something as opposed

(02:15):
to the five to ten minutes people often get between meetings.
It also allows for more open space if you're strategic.
For instance, if you start one meeting on the hour
and then start another at twenty minutes after the hour,
you can get a forty minute break in between meetings.
That's enough for lunch or to really get caught up,
or if you really need to stack in the meetings

(02:36):
on a particular day, you can do three in the
time you normally would have done two in your old
sixty minute default mode. When a schedule appears to have
no more space for fitting stuff in, that is one
way to make it work. Now. I know that electronic
calendars conspire against this, which is one reason I'm not
a fan of electronic calendars, though I know that's a

(02:58):
losing battle and a subject for a different time. But
if you are running a team or an organization, you
can set whatever times you want. Shortening the default meeting
time and making it slightly more unorthodox will put a
lot more discipline in your schedule. Do you have a
default meeting length, If it's something other than thirty or
sixty minutes, let me know. You can email me at

(03:21):
Before Breakfast podcast at I heart media dot com. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd
love to hear from you. You can send me your tips,
your questions, or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook,

(03:45):
and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's B the number four,
then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me
an email at Before Breakfast podcast. At i heeart media
dot com that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all
the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to staying
in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I heart Radio.

(04:13):
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