Design Your Workday to Boost Your Energy with Meeting Management

The goal of this people management tips series is to help you become more energized at work. There may be training sessions, an onboarding session, etc. for new hires. However, line managers, HR managers, or peers should conduct these training sessions rather than new hires alone. They will all need to delve deeply into many strategies to plan by corporate standards, which could put pressure on their daily workload. (Author,2023)

Most meeting advice centers on increasing the effectiveness of meetings or reducing the total number of meetings held. But how can you best manage your productivity by scheduling meetings around other job tasks? According to a recent study that addresses this issue, many people make two major scheduling mistakes: scheduling too many meetings on the same day or scheduling intense meetings next to equally demanding work. 

Both approaches may reduce your capacity to recover and rejuvenate during the day, which may hurt your productivity. Rather, this article provides fresh advice on how to manage meetings and work, as well as self-reflection questions to consider when organizing your schedule. (Zhang et al,2023) 

Meetings are still a common source of difficulty for knowledge workers. While conventional wisdom and earlier studies frequently concentrate on increasing the effectiveness of meetings or cutting down on their duration, there is another crucial factor that is rarely considered: the daily scheduling and arrangement of our meetings. But scheduling can help or hinder our energy and productivity at work, so it's important to examine it more closely. (Zhang et al,2023) 

Taylor’s situation

On his Thursday calendar, Taylor, a senior data expert who oversees a group of junior analysts, finds two meetings: one with a vendor liaison and the other with senior specialists from different departments. Subsequently, he understands that he must schedule some follow-up meetings with his subordinate analysts. 

Is it better for him to cram those more meetings into Thursday in addition to the current two, or should he move them to Friday? To conserve time and maintain his Friday calendar "clean" for working on his piece of the project report, he is tempted to pack the meetings into Thursday. (Zhang et al,2023) 

Minil’s situation

In a different setting, this week Minli, an experienced software engineer and development team manager, has two meetings scheduled. She is supposed to brief the strategic committee on a crucial meeting that could have an impact on the budget on Tuesday. She has an orientation session for new interns the following day, which is a familiar and simple task. 

In addition to these meetings, Minli has two projects that she needs to finish up technically; one is facing significant obstacles, and the other is almost finished and only needs some finishing touches. Is it better for her to tackle the more challenging task on Tuesday and finish the simpler one on Wednesday, or should she do the opposite? Minli is more likely to choose the first choice. She hopes for a less stressful rest of the week by taking on the most challenging tasks in her career and meetings on Tuesday. (Zhang et al,2023) 

The strategies used by Taylor and Mini are typical: downsizing meeting schedules to save time or scheduling important meetings and demanding individual assignments for the same day to complete them as quickly as feasible.  however, show that these tactics have disadvantages, especially when considering how they affect workers' energy levels during the workday.

These study results highlight potential areas for development as well as ways in which Taylor and Mini's scheduling strategies may unintentionally deplete their energy during the workday. Taylor's choice to schedule a lot of meetings on one day results in a significant time imbalance between meetings and individual work on that day, which will probably decrease his participation in quick breaks that are essential for recharging his batteries. 

Even though the goal is to maximize his schedule, this strategy can cause him to lose energy and perform worse. He might be more productive and energetic if the meetings and individual work were distributed more evenly throughout the two days.

Given Minli's situation, taking on a challenging assignment and attending a crucial meeting on Tuesday would put her under unnecessary pressure without providing enough time for recovery and respite. On the other hand, her Wednesday, which included an easy project and a low-stress meeting, could not be as stimulating. Instead, Minli will be more likely to maintain her energy levels for both days if she can couple the more challenging individual chores with the less demanding meeting on one day, and vice versa on the other. (Zhang et al,2023) 

Thus, while it's trying to figure out how to fit meetings into your workday in addition to specific duties, consider the following:

Pay attention to the ratio of individual work time to meeting time on a given day.

Meetings and individual work should be balanced to provide for necessary breaks and energy replenishment throughout the workday. This method, while seemingly timesaving at times, necessitates avoiding packing a single day with multiple meetings. Controlling the ratio of daily group work to individual work can boost morale at work, which can lead to better output, more creative thinking, and increased job satisfaction. (Zhang et al,2023) 

Plan your workday so that there are breaks between individual work and meetings.

Realize the advantages of balancing individual activities with high-pressure gatherings, or vice versa. Organize difficult assignments and meetings over several days or time slots throughout the day as opposed to concentrating them into a single period. By encouraging appropriate pressure balance, this strategy boosts workday energy and promotes improved performance. (Zhang et al,2023) 

Apply a more systematic approach to planning your weekday.

Instead of just scheduling a meeting or specific job for convenience, think about how it will affect the overall organization of your workday. It is important to consider how changing your workday's arrangement could affect your energy levels and output.

You might find the following questions helpful when making plans:

What effect would this scheduling choice have on how I divide up my meetings and my work time on this day?

Will fitting this meeting into this slot of the day result in an excessive amount of work time compression, at the expense of necessary breaks and refueling?

Will this timetable result in multiple high-pressure assignments and meetings in one day? How is that prevented?

Is there a more productive time slot in my calendar for this meeting or task that will allow me to balance high- and low-pressure work throughout the day?

For knowledge workers, meeting management involves more than just making meetings more productive and efficient in terms of time; it also necessitates approaching daily scheduling strategically. This entails weighing the time commitment and level of stress associated with assignments against daily meetings. 

By keeping these things in mind, you can avoid sneaky scheduling traps and avoid unplanned dips in your energy and output. Adopting a more all-encompassing strategy for arranging meetings could change the way you approach your weekday and result in a more productive and well-balanced arrangement of daily tasks. (Zhang et al,2023) 

References

Zhang, C., Spreitzer, G.M. and Qiu, Z.A. (2023) Arrange your meeting schedule to boost your energy, Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2023/08/arrange-your-meeting-schedule-to-boost-yourenergy?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedinnewsletter&tpcc=linkedinnewsletter (Accessed: 18 November 2023).