Why I schedule 10 minute meetings

10 minute meetings are not just a work productivity hack. They have a great psychological impact on how you treat your time and other people’s time.

Many management and outward facing roles involve a lot of meetings scheduled on a daily basis. Business ops folks, sales reps, customer support agents, product managers, and HR recruiters all have a large parts of their day allocated just for meetings.

Love it or hate it, meetings are how work gets done, but too often we have a default approach of setting intervals of 30 minute or 1 hour long meetings. By scheduling 10 minute meetings I signal the following:

1. Create a sense of urgency

With 10 minute meetings, neither of us are going to show up 8 minutes late. While it’s human nature to let previous meetings run over time or have technical delays dialing in, setting 10 minute meetings forces me to prepare at least 5 minutes in advance for the meeting. I get to zone in and handle all possible challenges before the meeting even begins. It shows the meeting attendees that I mean business and they reciprocate.

2. Respect colleagues, customers, and employees

Taking that extra step to make sure the meeting starts and ends on time shows that I value the time of my peers and customers. I don’t need to keep them there just to fill time.

Some of the best managers I worked with early in my career would end a meeting within the first 4 minutes.

This was quite shocking initially but it set a tempo for the entire organization. There is no room for fluff. I’ve learned that in 10 minutes I can get to the bottom of most complex challenges. This was especially true of 1 v 1 meetings.

For whatever reason, meetings with multiple business stakeholders will drag on much longer than necessary and it’s harder to control the tempo. I avoid these meetings unless multiple people are absolutely needed to make a decision or discuss a high impact challenge. For every other type of meeting, I can send a cool status message over email to the entire group.

3. Understand the scope of the discussion better

There should always be a clear agenda to follow during the meeting. There should be clear objectives and outcomes we want to achieve at the end of the meeting. Reduce a meeting down to the more digestible points of discussion. It prevents rambling. Of course, staying focused on topic during a meeting is difficult for all of us. I often ask myself: why am I here? Is a meeting really the best method of getting the answer I need? These are questions you should ideally answer before you set up a meeting.

As an engineer earlier in my career, I used to avoid meetings like the plague. I cynically thought meetings were merely a way for management to show that they were still relevant. By limiting meeting duration, I make sure the right person is in the room to talk about the specific point that will move the rest of the business KPIs forward.

Whether its a cold sales call with a potential prospect or a hiring interview with a job candidate, I know the outcomes that we are driving towards. This clarity makes it easy for both sides of the table.

Bonus:

Finally, short meetings help clear up my calendar for doing important thinking, planning strategically, and knocking out administrative tasks. Some of the best people leave their daily work calendar half empty so they can take time to optimize the scheduled work they actually should be doing. I also get to speak to 3x more people in the span of time it takes someone to have a meeting with 1 person.

Try setting a 10 minute meeting next time you need to chat with someone, especially for those 1 on 1 meetings. Resist the urge to bucket it as a 30 minute or 1 hour event. Think about the scope of the meeting and why you are in there. Maybe it’ll transform the way you approach your time and work.

Krish is a co-founder at Fireflies.ai building an AI assistant that joins your meetings and automatically captures all the important notes.

#management #productivity #leadership #teammates #workplace #meetings #studentvoices