Cal Newport’s 4 Tools for Taming Meetings

00:00:00.000 | All right, let's do a call.

00:00:03.760 | I think we have a call here, Jesse,

00:00:05.600 | that it's going to set up an even bigger topic I want to discuss.

00:00:10.440 | Okay, sounds good.

00:00:11.960 | >> Hi, Kel. My name is Vito.

00:00:14.240 | I'm an Engineering Manager at a tech company.

00:00:16.520 | As an Engineering Manager, I have a lot of meetings,

00:00:19.840 | and my calendar is always full.

00:00:21.680 | I'm having a hard time controlling this spiraling calendar,

00:00:25.880 | and I would like to ask you, what do you think I could do?

00:00:28.680 | I will have a lot of meetings.

00:00:30.600 | It is a part of my job I cannot avoid.

00:00:32.600 | But right now, I'm having full days with back-to-back meetings,

00:00:36.160 | and it is often the case that meetings will be scheduled right after one another.

00:00:42.040 | I do have a good scenario here that I control a lot of these meetings,

00:00:46.800 | and when they happen, and I can reschedule them.

00:00:48.860 | A lot of them, not all of them, of course,

00:00:50.620 | but a lot of them I can.

00:00:52.040 | So I do have some control over the duration of these calls,

00:00:55.320 | when do they happen,

00:00:56.480 | if they meet up against each other or not.

00:00:59.360 | So I would like to ask you,

00:01:00.840 | what is your suggestion on controlling this calendar?

00:01:03.920 | Should I have a little bit of time between every meeting?

00:01:09.060 | Should I schedule a lot of them together so that I have

00:01:12.000 | bigger blocks on other parts of my day or maybe other parts of my week?

00:01:17.200 | Then I have some days full and others not.

00:01:20.100 | How would you handle a situation where your calendar is full,

00:01:23.320 | and you need to have a lot of meetings,

00:01:25.220 | but you can move them around a little bit?

00:01:27.400 | What's your take on this?

00:01:28.960 | >> Well, I mean, Victor, meeting overload is a perennial problem.

00:01:32.720 | I think it's a problem that is worse these days than it's ever been before.

00:01:37.320 | So it's a good excuse to talk about meetings.

00:01:39.840 | Now, probably the best advice here is to be really weird in an unsettling way,

00:01:49.360 | but not a way that directly is going to get you fired,

00:01:53.480 | then people just aren't going to want you in the meetings.

00:01:55.200 | This is what I'm going to suggest,

00:01:56.140 | and I think this is going to be the solution to your problem, Victor.

00:01:58.660 | I want you to come into each of those meetings with a squid on your head.

00:02:06.600 | Don't really mention it.

00:02:08.960 | Just you come in, you're in the meeting,

00:02:10.780 | maybe it smells a little bit weird,

00:02:12.200 | and then just throughout the meeting,

00:02:14.920 | keep breaking in the volunteer to say,

00:02:17.100 | "Can I tell you what I really,

00:02:18.760 | really hate? Squids."

00:02:22.520 | Just keep bringing that up and then someone else will be talking and then just say,

00:02:27.240 | "Beady eyes, that devilish beak,

00:02:32.120 | Satan spawn they are.

00:02:34.240 | Yeah, squids, we could do without."

00:02:37.680 | I'm telling you, do this enough,

00:02:39.160 | the squids on your head,

00:02:40.080 | maybe sometimes you come in with a fishing rod,

00:02:42.040 | but you don't talk about it.

00:02:43.580 | Do this long enough and people will be like, "No, Victor, we're cool.

00:02:46.200 | We'll email you the notes.

00:02:49.520 | Don't worry about it.

00:02:50.800 | It's unsettling,

00:02:54.280 | but it's not like an HR violation.

00:02:56.560 | You're not coming in there and being like,

00:02:59.200 | "Let me tell you what I hate about people with red hair, it's squids."

00:03:03.040 | This doesn't work if your boss is a squid.

00:03:06.640 | Actually, let's be more serious here.

00:03:08.680 | I want to use this as an excuse to go through

00:03:11.640 | my standard toolbox for taming meetings.

00:03:16.560 | There's multiple different tools that can be deployed to tame meetings in exactly Victor's situation,

00:03:21.720 | a situation where you can't just not go to meetings.

00:03:23.920 | Victor is really clear about this here.

00:03:25.760 | I can't not do these,

00:03:26.920 | I can't not do these,

00:03:27.800 | don't tell me to stop do these,

00:03:28.960 | I can't not do these.

00:03:29.840 | Great. A lot of people are in that situation,

00:03:31.960 | be it in their office or over Zoom,

00:03:33.640 | but it's lots of meetings.

00:03:34.880 | I have a toolbox.

00:03:35.920 | I'm going to give you this toolbox and you can pick and

00:03:38.760 | choose which of these things might work best.

00:03:41.680 | These are all things I've written about before,

00:03:43.320 | but I'm going to bring them all together.

00:03:45.800 | I have four ideas to share.

00:03:48.760 | Idea number 1, meeting buffer.

00:03:53.520 | The meeting buffer method is all about working with your calendar in a slightly smarter way.

00:04:00.280 | Here's how it works.

00:04:02.040 | If you have to set up a meeting and you know how long that meeting is going to be.

00:04:07.120 | Often meetings have hard stop,

00:04:08.560 | it's one hour,

00:04:10.000 | that's the hard stop.

00:04:11.480 | Don't just block out that hour on your calendar,

00:04:14.880 | add 15-20 minutes to that block.

00:04:17.800 | It's not just if the meeting is supposed to be from 1-2,

00:04:20.880 | you have 1-2.15 or 1-2.20 actually blocked off on your calendar.

00:04:27.680 | If your calendar is public,

00:04:29.760 | everyone sees that as what's blocked off.

00:04:32.040 | If it's not public, you just treat it like any other meeting.

00:04:34.880 | I'm next available at 2.15,

00:04:37.240 | I'm next available at 2.20.

00:04:38.600 | What you then do with this 15-20 minute buffer period is that is where you process

00:04:44.120 | everything that came up in that meeting to get it out of your mind,

00:04:47.880 | to take the small steps,

00:04:49.200 | do the small tasks that could be done right away,

00:04:51.240 | to capture in whatever systems you use,

00:04:53.520 | the longer term tasks.

00:04:54.640 | It is how you clear out the mental buffer before the next meeting.

00:04:58.720 | This is important because its absence can create one of

00:05:02.800 | the real killer issues of a heavy meeting schedule,

00:05:04.840 | which is you get into a meeting,

00:05:06.600 | it generates new obligations and plans and things that's all up there as open loops.

00:05:10.560 | Then you go straight into the next meeting,

00:05:12.080 | you haven't dealt with those open loops yet,

00:05:13.960 | and now new ones are being generated.

00:05:15.480 | It's very stressful.

00:05:17.040 | Our minds hates it.

00:05:18.560 | We want to shut the door on one thing before we move to the other.

00:05:21.240 | Meeting buffers is going to make you feel 50 percent less anxious about a meeting filled day.

00:05:27.760 | Small hack goes a long way.

00:05:30.520 | What I'm going to do here is I go through these tools.

00:05:33.800 | Each one is going to get a little bit more aggressive,

00:05:36.600 | a little bit more radical than the one that follows.

00:05:39.960 | Meeting buffers is number 1.

00:05:41.480 | Let's now ratchet up the stakes here with tool number 2,

00:05:47.360 | which is the one for you,

00:05:50.000 | one for me approach to meeting scheduling.

00:05:52.720 | Here's how it works.

00:05:53.960 | If I'm putting a meeting on my calendar,

00:05:57.120 | I need to then within one week of that date,

00:06:01.480 | so let's say five workdays,

00:06:03.400 | schedule an equal amount of time that is protected time for me to just work without distraction.

00:06:09.280 | You want to put an hour-long meeting on my calendar for Monday,

00:06:12.000 | I'm going to find some time on Tuesday where I'm going to break schedule an hour-long work block,

00:06:16.960 | deep work block for me.

00:06:19.200 | I don't want to say deep work block, it could be whatever.

00:06:21.120 | It could be just get my act together,

00:06:23.160 | go through my inbox,

00:06:24.160 | just take a breather and try to organize everything that's going on.

00:06:26.560 | I don't care what you do in it,

00:06:27.480 | but it's a non-meeting block.

00:06:28.720 | One-to-one ratio is the default application of this tool.

00:06:32.000 | Two-hour meeting here,

00:06:33.000 | I have to find two hours later in the week that I protect.

00:06:35.400 | When it's on my calendar,

00:06:36.520 | I treat it as a meeting with myself.

00:06:38.400 | That time is no longer available for other people to come and take it.

00:06:42.040 | Now, as other meetings fill into your calendar,

00:06:43.720 | you might have to try to fit these in elsewhere.

00:06:46.240 | But what you'll end up with is enforcing a predetermined ratio of meeting the non-meeting time.

00:06:53.280 | I like the one-to-one ratio,

00:06:55.200 | one-to-one every minute in a meeting gets a minute of protected time.

00:06:58.400 | I like that ratio.

00:07:00.120 | You might use different ratios depending on what you do for a living.

00:07:04.280 | If you're an executive that is almost always in meetings,

00:07:07.280 | that's where most of your work happens.

00:07:09.360 | Maybe it's a two-to-one ratio.

00:07:11.260 | So for every meeting,

00:07:12.260 | you schedule half that length in undistracted time for yourself,

00:07:18.120 | somewhere else in your calendar.

00:07:19.520 | On the other hand,

00:07:20.520 | maybe if you're in a more concentration forward position,

00:07:24.080 | it's a one-to-two ratio.

00:07:25.560 | For every hour of meeting here,

00:07:26.800 | I'm going to find two hours somewhere else.

00:07:29.000 | But anyways,

00:07:30.000 | the key here is you're being intentional about what ratio you want your time to be collaborative

00:07:34.280 | versus individual concentration.

00:07:36.460 | And you're taking advantage of the calendar and the social and professional convention

00:07:41.760 | around this time is blocked.

00:07:43.160 | So it's not available to actually enforce that ratio.

00:07:47.880 | All right,

00:07:49.960 | idea number three.

00:07:52.160 | Again, let's ratchet up a little bit.

00:07:55.040 | Wage war on "standing meetings."

00:08:00.520 | Now in academia,

00:08:01.520 | this is a killer.

00:08:02.520 | I think this is a killer in a lot of other places as well.

00:08:05.360 | It is people who have been assigned,

00:08:07.360 | okay, we're working on this obligation.

00:08:10.120 | Here is a project that,

00:08:11.840 | you know,

00:08:12.840 | me and Jesse and this other person have been assigned to work on.

00:08:16.520 | This is an open obligation.

00:08:17.800 | I'm stressed.

00:08:18.800 | Like, how am I going to make progress on this?

00:08:21.200 | I don't listen to Cal Newport.

00:08:22.600 | So I don't do multi-scale planning.

00:08:24.400 | What is the easiest thing you can do in that moment to assuage your anxiety about making

00:08:28.800 | progress on a project?

00:08:29.800 | You say,

00:08:30.800 | I know what we'll do.

00:08:31.800 | All right, Jesse.

00:08:32.800 | All right, other guy.

00:08:33.800 | Standing meeting.

00:08:35.120 | Let's just get a meeting on repeat.

00:08:37.040 | So we know at the very least every week,

00:08:39.080 | Tuesday at 2.30,

00:08:40.080 | that we get together on Zoom and we talk about this thing.

00:08:42.240 | And now I can be like,

00:08:43.760 | "Hoo, this will be, you know,

00:08:45.920 | not forgotten because I trust meetings on my calendar."

00:08:48.920 | This can completely take over your calendar with all of these different standing meetings,

00:08:53.040 | one for everything you're working on,

00:08:54.720 | where the actual amount of useful collaboration that happens is often very little.

00:08:59.000 | Like, sometimes the meeting is a forcing function for you to do something,

00:09:02.240 | but it clogs up your calendar.

00:09:03.680 | It's a big source of calendar congestion.

00:09:08.160 | So wage war on them.

00:09:10.320 | Replace standing meetings with much more concrete processes for how you're going to make progress

00:09:16.560 | on this specific project.

00:09:19.400 | So you don't say,

00:09:20.400 | let's just meet Tuesdays at 2.30.

00:09:21.400 | You say, well, okay,

00:09:22.400 | what is the next thing that needs to happen here?

00:09:24.040 | We need a draft of this client report with some commentary.

00:09:27.840 | Great.

00:09:28.840 | Jesse, you have the ball here.

00:09:31.000 | Write that report.

00:09:32.280 | You write that draft.

00:09:33.600 | Once you have a good draft,

00:09:35.960 | put it into this Google doc in this folder,

00:09:39.240 | like a shared doc where we can see it.

00:09:42.240 | Send us a note to say it's ready.

00:09:44.120 | That will start a 24 hour timer for us to look at it.

00:09:48.560 | Get it done this week.

00:09:50.560 | And look, I have a standing office hours on Fridays.

00:09:54.520 | That will be the time,

00:09:55.520 | like if I have any big questions,

00:09:57.160 | or you have any big questions,

00:09:58.400 | come meet me there.

00:09:59.400 | I don't know.

00:10:00.400 | I'm thinking about this out loud,

00:10:01.400 | but my point is it's specific and it's concrete.

00:10:03.440 | What is the next thing that has to happen for this project?

00:10:05.320 | Okay.

00:10:06.320 | Who's doing it?

00:10:07.320 | How do they signal they're done?

00:10:08.320 | What happens after they're done?

00:10:09.320 | How do we get to the next step?

00:10:10.320 | So it's not just let's meet again next Tuesday.

00:10:12.320 | It's let's do this specific work

00:10:14.120 | and here's how it's going to unfold.

00:10:15.520 | So replacing standing meetings

00:10:16.720 | with concrete project specific processes

00:10:19.600 | for how you're going to get to the next step

00:10:21.840 | is way more effective than let's just get on Zoom every week

00:10:25.000 | and small talk for a while

00:10:26.680 | and then kind of make excuses

00:10:28.160 | for why we didn't get things done.

00:10:29.880 | All right.

00:10:31.200 | So the last thing I want to recommend

00:10:34.480 | for waging or tackling meetings,

00:10:36.960 | ratcheting up again,

00:10:38.520 | is office hours plus reverse meetings.

00:10:41.600 | Office hours are great.

00:10:44.440 | Regular times that you are available.

00:10:47.240 | This time on these days, I'm always available.

00:10:49.360 | You can come into my office.

00:10:50.440 | My phone is on.

00:10:51.280 | I have a Zoom window open

00:10:52.440 | if you're in a hybrid environment.

00:10:54.080 | No appointment necessary.

00:10:55.440 | Come grab me.

00:10:56.440 | That is great on its own.

00:10:58.720 | It allows, for example,

00:10:59.880 | small issues to be taken care of

00:11:01.800 | without having to have asynchronous

00:11:03.400 | back and forth conversations

00:11:04.640 | or hold dedicated meetings.

00:11:05.880 | Just stop by my office hours

00:11:07.280 | and we'll chat about it, right?

00:11:08.800 | That's great.

00:11:10.480 | But it can be used to implement

00:11:12.920 | this more aggressive notion

00:11:14.280 | that I call the reverse meetings concept.

00:11:18.040 | Subscribers to my newsletter

00:11:19.360 | have heard me talk about this.

00:11:20.840 | A little chance for a plug, by the way.

00:11:23.280 | If you don't subscribe to my newsletter,

00:11:24.600 | you should.

00:11:25.440 | calnewport.com.

00:11:26.280 | I've been writing that since 2007,

00:11:28.040 | roughly one article per week

00:11:30.440 | about all the types of stuff I talk about here.

00:11:32.440 | Plug ended.

00:11:34.120 | So the reverse meeting concept

00:11:35.600 | leverages office hours in a way

00:11:37.240 | that I think is quite powerful.

00:11:38.360 | Here's how it works.

00:11:39.200 | The standard way meetings unfold is

00:11:41.640 | I need your help.

00:11:43.080 | This three or four people's help

00:11:44.520 | on something I'm trying to work on.

00:11:46.640 | I need some input.

00:11:47.560 | I need to assign them some tasks.

00:11:48.720 | The standard thing to do is

00:11:50.000 | I'm gonna organize an hour long meeting.

00:11:52.400 | So now six of us have to give up

00:11:55.920 | an hour of our time

00:11:57.400 | to come to this meeting

00:11:59.600 | so that I can make progress on this thing

00:12:01.320 | that I'm trying to work on.

00:12:02.160 | So that's six total man hours

00:12:04.120 | of time obligation generated by a meeting.

00:12:06.480 | Reverse meetings leverages office hours

00:12:09.000 | to significantly reduce that footprint.

00:12:10.720 | It says, okay, if I need help,

00:12:12.360 | feedback or assignments from each of you,

00:12:14.080 | five or six people,

00:12:15.360 | to make progress on this meeting,

00:12:17.080 | I am going to go to each of your office hours one by one.

00:12:20.840 | I will come to you.

00:12:21.960 | I'm not gonna force you all to come to me

00:12:24.360 | and take this time out of your schedule.

00:12:25.520 | I'll come to you

00:12:27.320 | in time you've already put aside

00:12:28.560 | for types of quick discussions.

00:12:29.640 | And with each of you,

00:12:30.480 | I'll, hey, what do you think about this?

00:12:31.920 | Could you take this on?

00:12:33.800 | Now let's say on average,

00:12:35.600 | I talk to each of you for 10 minutes.

00:12:37.080 | Now that's less convenient for me

00:12:38.360 | because your office hours might be spread out.

00:12:40.360 | So I have to take three days

00:12:42.520 | and remember to go to talk to each of you.

00:12:44.280 | The onus is on me.

00:12:45.360 | I have to do more work.

00:12:47.520 | But let's look at the total man hour footprint

00:12:50.040 | of what just happened.

00:12:51.320 | Before we had six people spending an hour,

00:12:53.480 | six total hours of time being taken away

00:12:55.640 | from other types of pursuits.

00:12:57.200 | In this setup, it is significantly less.

00:13:01.400 | There's me doing 10 minutes with five other people.

00:13:06.640 | So if we wanna add that up,

00:13:08.600 | we do 50 minutes times two

00:13:10.400 | because it's the time I'm spending,

00:13:11.640 | the time you're spending.

00:13:12.680 | So now we're less than two hours.

00:13:15.440 | We're closer to an hour and a half total footprint.

00:13:17.560 | So we've reduced this footprint by a significant amount.

00:13:21.040 | We have also made the life easier

00:13:22.680 | for these other five people.

00:13:24.140 | Me coming to your office hours,

00:13:26.320 | we are already there taking calls

00:13:28.520 | and having people coming in

00:13:29.480 | and chatting with you for 10 minutes

00:13:31.000 | is a no op in terms of an impact on your schedule.

00:13:34.600 | It was time you'd already set a time for that.

00:13:36.000 | That's such a less of a injury to your schedule

00:13:40.880 | than you having to actually put aside a full hour

00:13:43.280 | that you've now lost outside of your office hours

00:13:45.260 | to doing this discussion.

00:13:46.380 | The only person who maybe has to do slightly more work

00:13:48.680 | in this is me because I have to coordinate

00:13:51.240 | and go to each of you

00:13:52.080 | and spread out my meeting over multiple days.

00:13:54.040 | But you know what?

00:13:54.880 | Good.

00:13:55.700 | It should be harder to call a meeting than it is.

00:13:57.960 | You know, the person generating the meeting

00:13:59.280 | should do more work than the people who have to attend.

00:14:02.480 | So use office hours as the foundation

00:14:05.160 | for doing reverse meetings.

00:14:06.360 | There's so much that can get organized

00:14:07.860 | without having to actually put aside

00:14:09.640 | extra bespoke periods of conversation

00:14:12.600 | for each individual project

00:14:14.040 | that some conversation requires.

00:14:16.420 | So that's my toolkit.

00:14:19.960 | Meeting buffers, one to one ratio,

00:14:22.120 | one for you, one to me on your scheduling.

00:14:24.260 | Replace standing meetings

00:14:25.280 | with concrete progress and process

00:14:27.720 | and use office hours to switch from standard meetings

00:14:31.140 | to reverse meetings.

00:14:32.800 | All of those things will really help.

00:14:35.620 | There you go.

00:14:37.880 | The great thing about summer for professors, Jesse,

00:14:39.600 | is meetings go away.

00:14:41.720 | - No more meetings, baby.

00:14:42.800 | - No more meetings.

00:14:43.760 | - And no more meetings for you this fall either, right?

00:14:46.600 | - Well, no meetings, some of that's not teaching.

00:14:48.940 | - Oh, you still have meetings.

00:14:50.520 | - Yeah, so summertime, I'm off the clock.

00:14:53.940 | - You still have to go to the meetings.

00:14:55.280 | - Well, but in like summertime, I'm not a professor.

00:14:57.080 | - Oh, sorry.

00:14:57.920 | - Yeah, yeah, so like in summertime, I pay my own way.

00:15:00.600 | I'm on a 10 month salary at Georgetown.

00:15:02.560 | So I can do whatever.

00:15:03.640 | This fall, I'm on teaching leave.

00:15:05.160 | So I don't have to teach, which does save a lot of time,

00:15:07.120 | but it's not, it's also just normal academic life

00:15:12.120 | still happens, so meetings and this and that.

00:15:14.760 | And I don't think they're gonna put up with it,

00:15:16.000 | and rightly so.

00:15:17.320 | I think we're probably past that period where it's like,

00:15:20.240 | I'm just gonna have to zoom into this faculty meeting

00:15:23.520 | because, you know, the virus or this or that.

00:15:26.160 | I think we're probably past those point now.

00:15:27.800 | Everyone's had COVID three times.

00:15:29.060 | I think like we're probably gonna be back to

00:15:32.760 | you gotta come in.

00:15:33.880 | You know, the Dean wants to meet with you.

00:15:35.760 | You're coming to meet with the Dean.

00:15:37.000 | We're having a faculty meeting.

00:15:38.920 | You're coming in for the faculty meeting.

00:15:40.720 | I mean, maybe not, I don't know.

00:15:41.920 | Academia is slow about that stuff.

00:15:43.480 | - I think a lot of the other professors

00:15:44.880 | were probably pushed back too.

00:15:45.960 | So you wouldn't be alone.

00:15:47.160 | - Yeah, well, if anyone asks,

00:15:49.280 | I'm incredibly worried about,

00:15:51.500 | here's the problem with,

00:15:53.160 | I can say I'm incredibly worried about picking up COVID

00:15:55.680 | so I can't come to the meetings,

00:15:57.200 | but we've been teaching in full classrooms

00:15:59.400 | for a long time at this point.

00:16:01.240 | So it's kind of hard to argue that like,

00:16:03.400 | the thing I'm really worried about

00:16:04.640 | is the 20 minutes that's me and you in an office,

00:16:06.640 | not the 50 kids that I'm lecturing to.

00:16:09.420 | But it'll be good.

00:16:11.840 | I've missed the campus is nice.

00:16:12.680 | It'll be nice.

00:16:13.500 | 'Cause I build days around it.

00:16:14.560 | - Yeah, you can get to the gym too.

00:16:16.720 | - Yeah, I can get to the gym.

00:16:18.000 | I can work in their libraries.

00:16:19.200 | It's like a nice change of environment.

00:16:21.080 | - I mean, it's a sweet campus.

00:16:22.480 | - It really is nice, yeah.

00:16:23.800 | (upbeat music)

00:16:26.380 | (upbeat music)

Cal Newport’s 4 Tools for Taming Meetings | Deep Questions Podcast

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