Recurring meetings and tasks are stubborn creatures.

When they get on our calendar, they tend to stay awhile. The only way to get rid of them is by getting intentional with how and where you’re spending time. A meeting audit can identify and find pockets of time.

Why recurring events?

Recurring meetings and tasks take too much time on our calendar. They also give us the most amount of opportunity to free up time. 

Recurring meetings.

The golden rule for scheduling recurring meetings is that they should provide recurring value. As soon as value begins to fade, you need to investigate why that’s happening.

One way to get rid of these recurring meetings is to do a quarterly meeting audit.

👉🏻 Step 1: Identify any recurring meetings you own and the total time they take on the team’s calendar.

👉🏻 Step 2: Survey your team: 

• “What recurring meetings have we outgrown and should be removed?”
• “What recurring meetings are useful and should be kept?

If the meeting isn’t advancing your goals and taking space on everyone’s calendar. Kill it.

👉🏻 Step 3: Optimize remaining recurring meetings by asking:

1. “Can we shorten the length of this meeting?”
2. “Do we have the right people in this meeting?”
3. “How can we make this meeting a better use of our time?”

Discuss as a group and commit to next steps.

👉🏻 Step 4: Repeat every quarter.

(Your 1:1s and team meetings are high-impact/high-leverage meetings. Please don’t kill these. Instead, work with your teams to design a better experience.

Recurring tasks

Recurring tasks should provide recurring value.

Try doing a monthly inventory of tasks on your plate and start killing tasks that aren’t adding value. If you look carefully you’ll find at least a couple of them need to be stopped or can be done by someone else. If it’s the former, it’s time to evaluate how to stop them, if it’s the latter, it’s time to delegate them to someone else on your team.

The only way to save time is by getting intentional with how and where you’re spending time. A meeting audit is a high-impact tool. I hope you try it.

Ali