Comment by block_dagger
1 day ago
How about just be punctual, respecting the time others have agreed to meet with you? Simpler solution than what this article suggests. People will abuse that system just the same anyway.
1 day ago
How about just be punctual, respecting the time others have agreed to meet with you? Simpler solution than what this article suggests. People will abuse that system just the same anyway.
How do you plan to show up on time if one of your meetings ends at 2pm, the next one starts at 2pm, the meeting rooms are 3 floors apart, and you need to go to the restroom because you've been in meetings since lunch and need to pee? You're going to clone yourself?
Tell the people in the first meeting at the start that you’ll need to leave a few minutes early, to set the expectation and make sure any important stuff is done early. Then when it hits your transition window, politely tell them you have to run and leave.
And have some subset of people in each mtg do that every mtg every single day?
I personally prefer the 5 minute gap, it's a simple and clean solution.
You have to reject one meeting invitation and tell them why.
Isn't the easier solution to stop meetings 5 minutes to the next meeting slot?
At the start of the first meeting, you annouce that you need to leave at 1:50 and ask the meeting to respect that.
The thing is, a lot of meetings start with presenting evidence of a problem, then have some discussion of the problem and potential options, and only in the last 10 minutes do the proposed actions turn into firm decisions with names against them.
And often if I'm in a meeting it's because I think the problem is important and I want it solved. Getting permission for my team to fix things, or getting other teams to agree to fix things, is the point.
1 reply →
I'd rather have a 5-minute break built-in for everyone by starting 5-past and actually enforce meeting end-times. Behaviors would change if people knew they had 25 or 55 minutes for a meeting and that folks would just leave when the time is up.
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1:55 pm “I gotta run to my next meeting” and slip out the door.
This. In my experience you have to call out people and tell them politely that you expect them to be on time.
Otherwise, people will simply come 10 minutes past if you start 5 minutes past.