How to SAVE yourself from DROWNING in Emails and Meetings.

Years ago I joined a large company. I replaced someone who received a promotion and moved to a different division.

Naturally, I inherited all of his meetings and conference calls.

Within days I was drowning - meetings, calls, emails.

Then, I took my life back.

I cut the duration of each meeting in half.

And then I did again...

Instead of 6 daily meetings of 1 hour each - I had 6 meetings, 15 mins each.

I also scheduled them back to back and with different groups of people.

This way, when 15 mins were up, the group had to leave to make room for the next group.

15 mins were enough. Also, there was no time for anyone to pull out their mobile phones and not to pay attention - while contributing to another problem, emails.

The 15 min meetings forced everyone, including myself, to come to the point quickly.

Some people felt uneasy that they do not look busy. I told them not to worry - that they do not need to look busy by sitting in meetings all day long - that there are plenty of other useful things to do. They all loved it - everyone hated meetings, as it turned out.

To stop endless email chains, with lots of people on CC I made a rule - if there are 3 emails on a subject, stop the thread and put it on the agenda of the closest 15 mins meeting.

The person who wrote 3rd email on a subject had no choice but to do a good job with it - summarizing and teeing it up for a quick resolution at a meeting.

That 3-strikes-out rule cut the email clutter for everyone.

With all of this time won, finally I told everyone not to email me during work hours but call me if something required my attention or stop by and see me. I set up an automated email reply to that effect.

"I am not checking my emails between 8:30am and 5:30pm. Something urgent - please call me on my mobile xxxxxxx or stop by my office. Otherwise, please come to one of the daily 15-min meetings."

Because each of these meetings had a proper topic, it was quite clear to which meeting one should come.

Not only I got my time back, all of these people got their time back too - they were all very thankful.

They had so much time now, that I found two of them playing video games. But that is a topic for a future article..

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