How to Optimize Meetings?

Effective meetings are crucial, especially in the era of remote work. Well-organized meetings can alleviate mental and physical fatigue, enhance overall well-being, and boost productivity. Following are some strategies you can employ to have better meetings:

1. Reduce Meeting Fatigue;
2. Promote Better Engagement;
3. Prepare Efficiently.

Reduce Meeting Fatigue

1. Limit Number of Meetings: Implement a daily cap on the number of meetings you are involved in to prevent burnout and avoid overwhelming schedules. For example, you could limit the number of meetings you have to a maximum 5 in an 8-hour work day.
2. Limit Meeting Duration: Shorter meetings are often more productive, focused and less draining. Embrace shorter, 30 or 45 minutes long meeting (instead of the default 60 minutes) to allow room for breaks or spillover time.
3. Be Async-First: Challenge the need for meetings and explore asynchronous options, such as using collaboration tools like Slack or email for communication and updates. Reserve meetings for discussions that truly require real-time interaction.
4. Avoid Back-to-Back Meetings: You should schedule meetings mindfully, and avoid back-to-back meetings to improve focus and prevent cognitive overload. This allows time for breaks between meetings to rest, refresh, and recharge.
5. Use Blockers: Guard your time. Use "tentative" blockers in your calendar to signal to your colleagues that you're open for important meetings but value the time in between for deep work, reflection, or simply a well-deserved pause.

Promote Better Engagement

1. Limit Number of Participants: Include only essential participants to keep meetings focused and efficient. In smaller groups, each participant is more likely to actively engage in the discussion, leading to quicker decision-making and problem-solving. With too many people, some might feel less inclined to participate, and their insights might go unheard.
2. Communicate Efficiently: Be an effective communicator by sticking to the agenda and making your point quickly and effectively. Wherever possible, use standards and references so people can grasp the idea quicker or learn more afterwards.
3. Discourage Multitasking: Promote better engagement by discouraging multitasking during meetings. This ensures that people don't have shifting focus.
4. Assess Engagement: If you see people not focusing or participating then it may be a sign that the meeting is not relevant for them, there are too many people in the meeting, the meeting goes for longer than expected, or the meeting is veering off-track.
5. Continuous Improvement: Regularly assess the effectiveness of your meeting strategies and gather feedback from participants to make necessary adjustments.

Prepare Efficiently

1. Set Clear Objectives: Start by defining clear goals for the meetings. This keeps the discussion focused and prevents meetings from veering off track, which can be mentally exhausting.
2. Share the Agenda: Share the meeting goals/agenda with participants before the meeting. This allows attendees to prepare, and everyone knows what to expect.
3. Breakdown Long Meetings: Often, longer meetings can be broken down into smaller, more focused sessions with fewer participants. This simplifies discussions and promotes better participation. You can then regroup to share the results of the smaller meetings in a larger setting if needed.
4. Assign Action Items: If a meeting requires follow-up actions, the organizer should create and distribute action items, assigning responsibilities to individuals to distribute the workload and save time.