As a creative director, I don’t usually think about the mechanics of meetings and how to make them more effective. But these last couple months, trapped in front of a rickety stand-up desk made out of a toy bin, an Amazon box and tattered copies of CA Annuals from the 2000s, I definitely have a few thoughts.
1. 15 MINUTES – or – THE DEATH OF THE HOUR-LONG MEETING
Yes, the default in Outlook is to set each meeting for 30 minutes, and yes, most people extend that to a whole hour. But now that an hour feels like 17 days, it’s time to rethink our default. At Luckie, our default meeting is now 15 minutes. A traditional hour-long meeting is now 35 minutes, tops. And the best meeting of all is 5 minutes. Hop on, take care of business, hop off. It’s so liberating I almost cried the first time we pulled one off.
2. THE WALKING MEETING
Sometimes you need to share your screen or see people’s faces. A lot of times, really. But try to identify a meeting or two each day where you don’t absolutely need a video chat, and set it as an old-school dial-in number. Yes, include an agenda and a goal. But also make it very clear that this meeting is to take place on foot, outside, walking in your backyard or on a safe street (maintaining your 6 feet, of course). If some team members don’t have that situation available, at least they’re able to wander back and forth from their home office to their kitchen, while their chairs and skeletons get a little break.
3. THE MEETING WITH YOURSELF
It’s hard to remember this, but we’re not actually anchors on a 24-hour news channel. So let’s take a break from our on-camera work cranking out new episodes of Zoom Workday and book a little time to actually think and do the work. I like to block the early morning until 9:30, and then an hour or two in the afternoon, for focused writing, thinking and making. Pick the times when you’re most productive and guard them with your life (or at least with the little red X “decline meeting” button). That way, you end each day with the pleasant, sound-sleep-producing feeling of having actually accomplished a thing or two.
What’s working for you? Drop us a line. luckie.com/contact-us/
