Start meetings late

There's a better way to do speedy meetings

tl;dr - start meetings 5-10 mins late and take a break instead of trying to end them early

A lot of people spend a good chunk of their day in back-to-back meetings. The more senior you are, the worse it gets. You're constantly juggling multiple demands on your time, trying to keep up with the never-ending stream of requests for your attention.

The problem with this way of working though is that you're forced to switch gears repeatedly – from planning a launch to reviewing technical specs to giving feedback. This is exhausting.

Your mental capacity for knowledge work is limited, so you quickly exhaust it when skipping breaks between meetings. You're left unable to function at your best.

Imagine asking someone to do back to back squats, push-ups, and bench presses without any breaks. That's what many people try to do at work – they neglect their own mental fatigue and push through, hoping to get more done. But the truth is, your brain needs rest, just like your muscles.

One solution is to take short breaks between meetings. Google Calendar even has a feature called Speedy Meetings that schedules 25-minute or 50-minute meetings with a buffer in between.

Sounds good on paper, but it rarely works.

Most people simply ignore the end time and take the full hour, leaving no room for a break before the next meeting.

That's why I propose a different approach: start your meetings late instead of trying to end them early. Start a meeting at 10:05 am, for example, and end it at 10:30 am instead of trying to start at 10:00 am and end at 10:25 am.

This way, you can wrap up your meetings at the top of the hour and then take a short break before the next.

I've been using this strategy for years, and it's worked wonders.

It's also a great way to avoid wasting time waiting for people who are notoriously bad at showing up on time. I like to think I’m helping them be on time at least sometimes 😄.

I wish there was a way to automatically schedule meetings this way, but there isn’t, so you have to do it manually. If anyone working on Google Calendar is reading this, can you implement this please?

That’s it for this time. If you found this useful, can you forward it to a friend? Thanks!

-Mustafa