In all businesses, time is money. Sounds simple, maybe even too simple, but one thing is for sure for all of us. All we have is our time. And it is up to us to make the most of it if we want to be effective.
There are many ways to make our time go further and I do not profess to be a guru in the time effectiveness space, but I do have a few things that work and work well. Unfortunately, they are counterintuitive to what we do every day.
Most of us use some type of calendar or planning program to plan and execute our days, which breaks the day into 10-, 15-, 30- or 60-minute 'blocks'. Have you ever noticed how most people, when booking meetings, book 60-minute meetings? Is this because Outlook (sorry Bill, I love what you've done) has convinced us that 60 minutes is a nice, round number and makes it easier to schedule the day?
If you'd like to improve your time effectiveness/efficiency, try this next time you book a meeting: instead of booking the hour, book 40 minutes. Yes, just 40. People will think this strange at first, but will show up on time more often. Less time will be wasted since most meetings probably don't need an hour since much of the time, attendees just use up the time alloted, and you'll finish 20 minutes earlier than usual. The benefits? 20 minutes (33% of your time) can be used to move to your next meeting – on time, return some urgent emails, read some mail that normally sits until the end of the day... the list goes on.
Now, if you have other people that you work with that start to adopt this strategy, the team effectiveness starts to skyrocket and more work is produced as less time is wasted.
So, tell me what you think. Could this work in your organization? Do you have any other ideas to improve employee/organizational effectiveness?
Now, here is a great (short) read from Harvard Business Review that I think will get you thinking: Hold Conversations, Not Meetings http://s.hbr.org/dZFBPw
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