Most meetings are just awful, not needed, and just a waste of time and energy. Often there are only a few people involved and needed so all the others are just hanging in and losing valuable time they could use for more important tasks.

That’s why I want to give you 5 tips on how I improve my own weekly schedule to make it as efficient as possible to get as much focus time as possible to keep you doing what you enjoy the most.

1. Purpose

Give your meetings a specific reason to exist and only invite people who are able to add value to reach the meeting's goal.

Here is a checklist created with my own experiences, if you can’t cross all boxes, you may don't send out that meeting invitation or participate in one:

• The specific goal is defined in the invitation

• Clear agenda is available in the invitation

• Duration is less than 20 minutes for quick discussions and less than 60 minutes for deep topics and discussions

• Only people who are responsible for the meeting topic attend

Give your meetings a purpose and show others. This way everyone can also be prepared well for it.

2. Give Feedback

A lot of meetings, especially in the field of design are handovers to developers and gathering feedback from clients or stakeholders. One simple trick, or to be specific, one simple tool that helped me reduce handover calls and feedback loops with clients was Loom. It allows you to record your screen while also recording your face and voice. After everything is said, you can easily share your screencast with a link to your colleagues.

3. Blockers for Focus Time

Keep certain times of your day or week free by just blocking them by yourself. During this time you will be completely able to focus on your deep work tasks.

4. Just Say No

If you feel that you are not the right person or can’t add value to that meeting just cancel it and ask for a quick update afterward if you need one. To cancel a meeting is totally fine. Forget FOMO! Get updated by a colleague later on.

5. Less is more

Some reoccurring meetings are not needed to be held frequently eventually. Just set it up as a single event and check later if another one is needed. Nothing steals you more time than a regular meeting that might have not a specific purpose.

I hope these tips are useful to you and you get more focus time with this.