The Power of Small

Wed, January 25, 2012 - 12:30:18

Meet Smarter

In a recent piece for the Harvard Business Review Blog, Paul Hammerness and Margaret Moore, authors of Organize Your Life, Organize Your Mind, discuss why focusing on one task (a practice we call “minitasking”) rather than multi-tasking, is the most effective way to get things done. As two passionate practitioners of mini-tasking, we’re in full agreement with their philosophy—and, as you know, it’s easy to make minitasking a part of your everyday routine.

But, in a modern workplace filled with distractions—from binging BlackBerries to dinging Twitter alerts and the occasional phone call or two—getting your fellow coworkers together to really focus on one issue can be a challenge. In fact, it’s one of the biggest problems we see in meetings today.

So, what do you do? Hammerness and Moore wisely suggest that you hold gadget-free meetings to stave off temptation. But, we have another idea to keep your meetings productive, on task, and low on distraction: shrink the clock and have the second meeting first. It might sound crazy, but it works.

What do we mean? Instead of scheduling a meeting to plan what your next meeting will be about, anticipate the second meeting ahead of time and have that one instead. It helps create a sense of urgency, which not only keeps everyone alert and on their toes; it actually fosters creativity and boosts problem solving skills.

If you can, try to have no more than three items on your agenda. While this isn’t always possible, it helps eliminate fatigue and boredom and increases everyone’s interest and participation. That’s important—because in many meetings, most people are just sitting there waiting for a chance to escape the conference room. And that’s not a productive use of anyone’s time.

Posted by Linda and Robin