SPEAKER: Feeling productive is a fluid experience.
For example, having to attend many virtual meetings in a day
may give some folks a sense that they'll
get less things done that day.
If that's the case for you, welcome to the first episode
of this Working From Home series,
where I will share five approaches
you can quickly implement on meeting-heavy days
to improve your relationship with your sense
of productivity.
For starters, the most immediate thing
you can do when you feel this way is
to flow, pause, and anticipate.
Having back-to-back meetings can create a sense of anxiety
for some or even dread, especially if there isn't
enough time between meetings to do a lot of the things
they would prefer doing.
When you have those days, acknowledge
that it's OK to not feel as productive,
and focus on giving it your best in those working
sessions with people.
Also, take the pauses in between sessions to take a break,
to breathe, to stretch, and drink water.
If you feel an absolute urge to want to complete more tasks,
then you can also have an ongoing to do list of things
you pull up that contains 15 to 30 minute tasks you would like
to accomplish both in your personal and work life,
and that you can knock out during the pauses
between your video calls.
Some of the things on this list could be paying your bills,
or learning from short how to videos,
or reading industry articles, or reviewing informational slide
decks, or even building an outline for a project.
A more long tail approach is to begin
to tell people what you want.
Over time, you gain a sense of when you're most productive.
And with that knowledge, I keep my personal calendar private,
but I keep my calendar for work visibly open to everyone
in my organization.
And I create do not book blocks on my calendar
to help people know when it's not a good time for us to meet.
For example, I work best batching all my meetings
in the mornings and using the evenings for other tasks
to reduce switching to different contexts so frequently.
And when I have supported customers in the other time
zones from California, then on Tuesdays and Thursdays
were my mornings where I had from 7:00 to 9:00
AM a slot called early time zone calls here if needed.
Also note if you're a subject matter expert
and a large portion of your meetings
could be reduced by answering the questions in bulk,
you can also create weekly office hour time slots
and have a running frequently asked
questions doc you ask people to review before joining.
Aside from designated explicit blocks
on my calendar for meetings, I also
communicate verbally that mornings work best for me,
and that my calendar is up to date for people
to find time slots that work best for them.
This strategy of being straightforward
with preferences has dramatically
improved my sense of productivity.
Another approach, probably less talked about,
is supporting protocols that enable attendees
to feel that the meeting is also productive for them,
because they're able to freely share their mind
without repercussions.
A non-verbal manner to do this is
to intentionally display a background that
promotes a feeling of safety.
For example, what's nice about virtual meetings is
you can offer people a safe space
by intentionally turning your camera on and displaying
a background that shares a small window into who you are.
This can naturally inspire others
to share about themselves and/or connect with you.
I personally use a backdrop of a forest because it's soothing
and it generates a lot of friendly chats,
as people join a call.
Other peers print quotes or even pin their children's artwork
in the background.
The point is you share something about yourself
and, in turn, it opens an invitation for others
to do the same.
A fourth approach to improve your sense of productivity
when dealing with days of lots of meetings
is using digital note taking to support your manifestation
of ideas faster.
I used to love handwritten notes,
but when it came to sharing those notes,
I had to find more hours in the day
to transcribe each session digitally,
on top of reminding people of their action items.
This is why it's helpful to create
meeting notes, brainstorming notes, or summaries
in digital formats first, with tools that
have search capabilities and that
can be shared directly within people's inboxes
during the meeting.
And anyone can further expand on it by accessing it as a link.
A final approach that helps ensure you save time
around meeting logistics is to empower people
to save you time with calendar resources.
For example, I used to spend a lot of time rescheduling events
when people mark that they couldn't make them via email.
But now, I use the event description
to inform members of my organization
that the calendar event can be modified by them
and suggest that they choose an alternate time that
works best for their schedule as my calendar is already
up to date.
Furthermore, when I'm the person scheduling a sync with others,
I include a friendly notice to why
I set up the meeting, the topics I would
like to discuss with them, and offer any links
to any pertinent documents.
This gives people time to think about how to best support me.
And sometimes the solution is not a meeting,
but instead it's them sharing a piece of information
over chat or email, in turn saving us
both time from having to meet.
And there you have it.
Five approaches you can implement
when working from home to boost your sense of productivity
with all day meetings.
If you're interested in learning more about some of the items
I mentioned, I've linked several resources
in the description of this video.
And if you found this episode helpful,
please click like and subscribe for future episodes.
Cheers.
Yeah, video meetings and like super stressful.
They stress me out.
I'm pretty stressed out about it.
I don't know.
Maybe [INAUDIBLE].
Maybe I'm an introvert.
I don't know.
I am an introvert.
I don't like meetings.
But I know other people are really good at it.