Planning your Meetings right

October 26, 2023 Chen Zhang, Gretchen M. Spreitzer, and Zhaodong (Alan) Qiu

– by Chen Zhang, Gretchen M. Spreitzer, and Zhaodong (Alan) Qiu
When faced with the challenge of scheduling your workday, particularly arranging meetings alongside
individual tasks, the authors suggests that we consider the following:
Focus on the relative proportion of meeting time to individual work time on a specific day, not just
the total hours spent in meetings.
The authors encourage to have a reasonable balance between meetings and individual tasks that allows
for essential breaks and energy replenishment throughout the workday. The authors caution not to overload
a single day with many meetings, even if it may sometimes seem like a time-saving strategy. Managing the
proportion of meeting time relative to individual work on a daily basis can enhance energy levels at work,
thereby contributing to improved performance, creativity, and job satisfaction.
Design your workday to create complements between meetings and individual tasks.
As per the authors the trick is pairing high-pressure meetings with low-pressure individual tasks, or vice
versa. Rather than clustering activities of the same pressure level into a single period, distributing
challenging tasks and meetings across different days or different time segments of the day fosters proper
pressure complementarity, thereby enhancing workday energy to facilitate better performance.
Adopt a more holistic approach to workday scheduling.
The authors discourages to simply fitting a meeting or individual task into the calendar for its own
convenience, consider the broader implications for your workday structure. The authors suggests us to be
mindful of how a scheduling decision may alter the arrangement pattern of your workday, potentially
influencing your energy and productivity.
The authors suggest the following questions that might be useful in the planning process:
1. How will this scheduling decision impact the balance between my meetings and individual work time
on this specific day?
2. Will adding this meeting to this specific segment of the day compress my individual work time too
much, sacrificing essential breaks and replenishment?
3. Will this schedule lead to back-to-back high-pressure meetings and tasks in a single day? How can
that be avoided?
4. Is there a better spot in my schedule to place this meeting or task, facilitating a more effective mix of
high-pressure and low-pressure work throughout the day?
In conclusion, the authors recommend us to being mindful of these aspects that can help you steer clear of
subtle scheduling traps and prevent unexpected drains on your energy and productivity. Indeed, by
embracing a more holistic approach to meeting scheduling, you may transform the way you approach your
workday, leading to a more balanced and fruitful arrangement of daily responsibilities.