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Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

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Speaker 1: Today's tip is to do a meeting audit. Study your

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Speaker 1: calendar to figure out exactly what time commitments you have.

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Speaker 1: Then you can decide if that is the right way

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Speaker 1: to be spending your time or not. I know that

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Speaker 1: Before Breakfast listeners do a great many things with their lives. However,

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Speaker 1: I know from listener notes that among the people with

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Speaker 1: more traditional careers, big chunks of the work day can

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Speaker 1: be spent in meetings. Sometimes it feels like too much

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Speaker 1: time is spent in meetings. It's important to figure out

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Speaker 1: what this time looks like so everyone can make wise choices.

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Speaker 1: Meetings exist for a reason. We need to work with

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Speaker 1: other people. It is unlikely that those people are going

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Speaker 1: to randomly show up in our offices or on zoom

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Speaker 1: at precisely the time when we want to speak with them.

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Speaker 1: It is also unlikely that they are going to be

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Speaker 1: randomly prepared to talk about the subject we need to

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Speaker 1: talk about. So we arranged to meet with certain people

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Speaker 1: at certain times. But in order to protect space for

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Speaker 1: collaboration on the schedule, certain things wind up happening. We

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Speaker 1: schedule recurring meetings theoretically so everyone will always be available. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: as the number of recurring meetings rises, people's schedules become

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Speaker 1: more disjointed. In order to find someone, you have to

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Speaker 1: schedule a meeting, and in order to make sure people

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Speaker 1: are focusing on a particular question or project within that

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Speaker 1: jointed schedule, you also have to schedule a meeting. It's

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Speaker 1: the major form of accountability. Meetings become a way of

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Speaker 1: gaining visibility, and no one wants to be exclusionary, so

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Speaker 1: more people wind up in meetings than need to be there.

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Speaker 1: This wastes people's time and make schedules even more fraught.

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Speaker 1: Soon it seems like all people are doing is going

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Speaker 1: to meetings. One person told me recently of looking at

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Speaker 1: her calendar and realizing she was scheduled into nine meetings

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Speaker 1: every single day. These are ones that she had absolutely

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Speaker 1: no choice about. Her presence was already set. That doesn't

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Speaker 1: even get to all of the one off meetings that

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Speaker 1: had to occur here and there. A few years ago,

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Speaker 1: another person told me about studying her calendar and realizing

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Speaker 1: that every month she was committed into one hours of meetings.

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Speaker 1: Before she even began thinking about what she needed or

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Speaker 1: wanted to do. A work month is about a hundred

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Speaker 1: sixty hours, so a hundred hours is a pretty high proportion.

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Speaker 1: Organizations know there is an issue which leads many to

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Speaker 1: come up with the seemingly wise idea of having, for instance,

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Speaker 1: no meeting Wednesdays. No one is supposed to schedule recurring

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Speaker 1: meetings on Wednesdays. It is only for emergencies. Great, right,

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Speaker 1: But I recently saw a tweet from someone noting that

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Speaker 1: a friend at one of those companies had twelve meetings

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Speaker 1: scheduled on a no meeting Wednesday. In every case it

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Speaker 1: was because the organizer had noted that Wednesday was the

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Speaker 1: only time everyone was free. It's funny, but the only

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Speaker 1: way we can be aware of the cost of these

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Speaker 1: meetings and to know if they are worth it or

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Speaker 1: not is to know how many there are. So if

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Speaker 1: you work somewhere with a lot of meetings, you need

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Speaker 1: to do an audit study your calendar for the past week.

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Speaker 1: What meetings did you attend, What did each day look like,

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Speaker 1: How many hours were devoted to each team? Who else

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Speaker 1: was in each meeting? How long was each meeting? Which

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Speaker 1: one's felt effective and which felt more meandering. Did any

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Speaker 1: feel like they shouldn't have happened at all? Now, once

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Speaker 1: you have all this information, you can see if there's

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Speaker 1: anything you can change. I have heard from people who

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Speaker 1: have had honest conversations with their managers about being overbooked

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Speaker 1: and have been released from attendance at some things. I've

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Speaker 1: also had managers realized that they have perfectly competent deputies

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Speaker 1: who can attend some of the meetings that they had

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Speaker 1: been attending and make sure everyone is steered in the

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Speaker 1: right direction. I have also seen some people realize that

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Speaker 1: they were volunteering to attend stuff for unknown reasons. It

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Speaker 1: isn't a party, It isn't even the cool kids table

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Speaker 1: at the middle cool cafeteria. Show your excellence in some

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Speaker 1: other way. When I've asked people to look at their

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Speaker 1: calendars in my workshops, I'd say that about a third

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Speaker 1: of people have been able to free up an hour

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Speaker 1: in a few minutes. With some intense study, you could

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Speaker 1: free up a lot more. But until you take a

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Speaker 1: hard look at this information, you can't really do that.

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Speaker 1: So it is worth investing the time to audit your time.

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Speaker 1: This goes for meetings, though honestly, it goes for obligations.

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Speaker 1: In general, some volunteers wind up over scheduled in meetings,

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Speaker 1: and indeed it can be worse if the organization isn't

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Speaker 1: actually putting a price tag on your time. When you

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Speaker 1: know where your time goes, you can make choices that

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Speaker 1: help you spend it better. So add up your meetings

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Speaker 1: and question all of them. You just might make more

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Speaker 1: time to get more were work done. In the meantime.

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Speaker 1: This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making

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Speaker 1: the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to

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Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,

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Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's b the number four,

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Speaker 1: then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me

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Speaker 1: an email at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media

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Speaker 1: dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled out with all

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Speaker 1: the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to staying

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Speaker 1: in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I Heart Radio.

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