If You Want to Waste Your Life Away Then Sit in Meetings
By: Tim Denning
Tags: Startup, Work, Meetings, Entrepreneurship, Productivity

Solutions to Meetings (To Save Your Life)

Time is all you have before you die. You want your time to spend it doing things you love and hanging out with your family. Don’t allow time thieves to piss your time up against the wall. Here’s how to save your life from meetings.

Set expectations

I’ve done this with my day off each week. I don’t work Thursdays because I write. If anybody calls me or messages me on that day then I have set an expectation they won’t get a response.

The upside of this strategy is that when people know you’re missing for a big chunk of time they respect what time they do have with you to get stuff done.

It has helped me to set expectations about meetings in advance. Like if I have a customer conversation right before a meeting then I let people know I’ll probably be late. The customer pays my salary, not the meeting.

Expect people to value your time and they will.

Show up only if there is a clear outcome

The outcome can’t be a discussion either. A discussion isn’t an outcome; it’s a rant. Ideally, if a meeting must be held, there is a decision to be made. What is the decision you want? It shouldn’t take a series of meetings to reach an outcome. Apply the MVP approach to meetings.

The decision won’t be perfect so let’s pick one and see what happens.

Fill your calendar up with private events nobody can see

This is a pro hack I learned off a serial meeting avoider. Meetings with yourself are glorious.

You can set meetings with yourself so that your calendar looks full. Then all you do is set those meetings to private so people assume you’re busy but have no idea why. Those time slots are where you can schedule productive work: coding, speaking to customers, making stuff, changing the world, etc.

Why am I here? If you don’t know, run.

I’ve asked myself this question every time I’ve attended a meeting in the last few years. Am I there making up numbers or is there a reason?

Most of us don’t need more information. Email and instant messages are already a full-time job to manage.

If you have nothing to say, then get the meeting notes

A speaking role at a meeting is a good sign of whether you even need to be there. If there isn’t a speaking role then you can just get the meeting notes and read over what everybody said.

Could the meeting have been an email? 9/10 times: yes.

The separation between meetings an emails has been lost.

Most meetings can be an email.

Next time you go to set up a meeting, ask yourself: “Can this meeting be an email and give everybody back time?”

Learning to respect other people’s time will help you excel in your career and get more time back to do what you love (for me, that’s writing).

If you’re forced to attend: checkout with your phone

There are some meetings you can’t escape no matter how hard you try. Even productivity expert, Tony Robbins, gets sucked into pointless meetings.

I have the answer: you can do the fashionable thing and checkout of a meeting by looking at your phone. A meeting can be a time to check emails, reply to direct messages, and do real work.

Pretending to be in a meeting is the punishment for setting up a pointless meeting. Everybody’s doing it. Why not you?

Have the polite discipline to say no

When you have the discipline to say no to a meeting and don’t say why, most people will never ask you why you can’t attend. It’s brilliant. Act busy and pretend to be important in front of meeting schedulers. They’ll eventually assume you’re not open to random meetings.

Don’t be an ass either. Say, “sorry I can’t attend but thanks for thinking of me. Hope the meeting goes well.” *Walks away smiling politely*

You don’t have to feel bad for saying no to meetings. It’s your life after all.