Just Say No (to meetings)

Do you really need to be at every meeting?

I used to finish a day of work thinking, “what did I even get done today…” often because of how many meetings I attended. I sat in half of them probably spacing out or doing work while someone else was talking.

Then I realized, can I just not go to this meeting?

Turns out the default for a lot of teams is to invite everyone who might be relevant to a meeting.

So before you accept an invite ask yourself, do I really need to be here?

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So thinking back to how we start our workday, we want to know the #1 task we need to get done for the day. If a meeting does not move that goal forward, we probably shouldn’t go (this of course excludes social events)!

If you’re not 100% sure you can skip the meeting, reach out to your manager and ask if that meeting is more important than making progress on your goal. Chances are, they’ll much prefer you working on your main goal and be happy to dismiss you from the meeting.

Working smarter and not harder is all about being extremely precious with your time, you’ll realize the more you respect your time the more others will respect your time as well.

This week’s action: Pick one meeting from your calendar this week that you don’t find useful to you and don’t go.

Let me know what meeting you removed and how your team/manager responded!

Thanks for reading,

Eden

P.S. My co-founder and I are working on ways to make sure people get what they want out of their careers, check out thecareernavi.com if you’d like to see our progress!