No Meeting Thursdays
Have you ever been in a position where you are in meetings during the day, and then you code at night just to feel that you are getting things done? I know I have.
In 2009, Paul Graham wrote an article about the maker vs manager schedule. It articulates that meetings are disastrous when you are on the maker's schedule because even a single meeting can blow a whole afternoon. After all, when we are scheduling many meetings, it is tough to focus on the task and get things done.
In today's world, most of us have two workdays - one on the manager's schedule and the other on the maker's schedule.
In the original article, Paul proposes that one can use office hours and set aside a time for meetings. But I struggled with this when acting as the team lead for one of the teams and found my day broken up by various meetings. After all, how do you tell your boss (and the rest of the business) that you have office hours and will only meet him/her/them during those? I think this works well when you are high enough on the corporate ladder.
Since office hours did not seem viable, I did the next best thing, blocking out chunks of time in my calendar for focus time. Blackout periods worked well in most cases, but I missed getting stuck in on a task for the whole day and not having to context switch for a meeting.
This resulted in the next iteration - A no-meeting day.
What is a No-Meeting Day?
A no-meeting day is a day for focused work. Essentially, it's a day in the week with no meetings so that you get uninterrupted time to do your job. This continuous focus time is perfect for deep work and more extensive projects. In addition, there is less context switching, so it's easier to achieve that magical state of flow.
And if you are a manager, it allows you also to be a doer.
A No-meeting day will never work for my role.
Now some of you might be reading this and going, "Yeah, it sounds great and I would love to get in on that action, but it will never work for my role".
Some functions like Sales, Customer Success and Product requires more collaboration than others. For these roles, it might be better to institute blackout periods where people can pick half a day each week where they are not expected to be in a meeting. Shared blackout periods can work well so that there is time to have meetings that involve multiple people or external stakeholders.
How to implement no-meeting days?
Now that I have allayed your fears, you want to know how to implement them for yourself and your team. Patience you must have my young Padawan.
The first step to a meeting-free day is to talk with your manager and get them on board. Trial it with one or two people first. People make a big mistake by setting themselves up for failure because they try to get the whole team to agree to try it from the outset. It's not hard to make space for a no-meeting day for a single person. If your manager is still concerned, start with blackout periods and then move up to no-meeting days.
We trialled it with one person before rolling it out to the rest of the FirstAML Product and Engineering team. I already had a few blackout periods in my calendar for focus time, so it was an easy sell to consolidate them into a single no-meeting day.
Next, communicate with others about your availability on no meeting days. Have a plan for how or when you are available in case of work emergencies.
The final step is to ensure that no meetings can be scheduled on your nominated no meeting day. Create a recurring all-day event on your calendar that blocks yourself or others from scheduling time with you. Making it recurring and not just a week by week addition makes it easier to maintain the meeting free schedule. I prefer to set up a regular Out of Office event with a title of Focus time and a message clearly stating that I am open to urgent meetings. However, you will have to slack me to accept.
Once you are happy with the trial, roll it out to the rest of the team.
Be Flexible
Make exceptions when necessary but try hard to avoid them.
Meetings involve more than one person. Sometimes, you have to take a meeting on your no meeting day because that is the only day someone else is available, or there is an urgent fire that you need to fight.
Having a no-meeting day does not mean that you don't get together with your co-workers or have spontaneous conversations. Feel free to have them; Just don't schedule it!
