How to Save a Million Milliseconds per Day

Saving time is impossible. 

But we all use the word ‘Save’ to mean ‘Avoid Waste’ or ‘Do the things I really want’.
For comparison, you can save $100 today by putting money in the bank or in your sock drawer.

In six months you can go back to the bank (or sock drawer) and get your money out and you’ll have it ready to use.

If you save $100 in a bank with an interest rate of 1% annually, you’ll get $101 dollars back.

If you invest your money in the stock market (not in 2016 of course, but over a longer period) you could get 10% annually and you would get back $110.

Saving time is more like earning interest on a $100.

With time, we are really trying to invest, not save. We want today’s time to give us the best results we can possibly get.  Unlike a savings account, with time you never get back the principle, you only receive the interest (value in the future)

So now that we share a common vocabulary, how does a person save a million milliseconds in a day (or about 17 minutes)?

1.  First thing in the morning … don’t consult smartphone or laptop or morning TV news

Avoid reading any e-mail or looking at Facebook or getting engrossed in the news.

Workout, brush your teeth, read a book, get a shower, eat breakfast, write in your journal, pay a bill or sit quietly and contemplate what you want to accomplish for the day. Better yet, write a list of things you want to get done. If you write the list, you will actually save even more time because you will focus on what you want done by the end of day.

If you avoid digital distractions first thing you can save up to 10 minutes. Reinvest the minutes with purpose...something that adds value to your life.

2. If you watch TV, switch to Netflix and avoid commercials

Yes you will have to sacrifice the latest shows, but you can manage this because your life goal has a professional vector and a family or personal vector.  Neither your professional pursuits nor your family goals will benefit from watching sitcoms (I’m sure someone has a exception to this rule, but I think the exceptions would be TV columnist).

For 30-60 minutes of programming you can create up to 15 minutes to reinvest.

3. Cut down on watching

If you watch two - 30 minute episodes, consider just watching 1 episode.  Have something ready to replace the TV time.  Since your energy is low at the end of the day, you might be able to introduce light reading or perhaps if you find a really entertaining business book, you could indulge in that.  

(Netflix Subscribers: If you want to help yourself cut down on watching, turn off auto-play.  It's not easy to find, so here's the quick details ... Upper Right Corner --> "Profile Icon" --> "My Account" --> "My Profile" --> "Playback Settings" --> Uncheck "Play next episode automatically".)

4. Substitute an educational or professional podcast or audiobook for music or talk radio during commute or exercise

Remember investing time is by definition saving time.  When you take time to invest in your future, you are actually saving time by creating a better more effective you in the future.  

This could be an investment of 15-60 minutes or longer depending on your one-way daily commute or the length of your exercise routine.

To extend this time savings, substitute podcast or audio books on both legs of your commute; home-to-work and work-to-home. 

5. At work, create a goal for every meeting that you host and publish it in your calendar invite

Determining and writing a goal will either shorten your meeting because you can stop when you meet the goal, or it will focus everyone so you can get to your goal quicker.  A goal does mysterious things to your brain that helps you hit the mark. Assume you could save 5 minutes per meeting.  If you have 3 meetings, it’s possible to save 15 minutes in one day.

If you attend another persons’ meeting, you can simply ask them at the outset of the meeting, “What's the goal for this meeting?”  That question will help everyone in the room dive into the meat of the collaboration.

If you think deeply you can probably find more interesting ways to save a million milliseconds.  If you do, you are on the path to something great...maybe saving a million seconds.

Leave a comment and let me know your biggest time waster?

Turn Tough Meetings into Successful Outcomes With an Excellent Plan and Meeting Kickoff That Creates Focus

Picture yourself in a meeting room.  You arrive early and people start trickling in.  It’s a few minute pass while you all   Who will do the most talking?  Who will be THAT GUY who won’t agree with anything. Or THAT GIRL who won’t stop talking even though nothing relevant is being said.

This is how things start in many of your meetings.  Put aside the bliss of the “status” meeting where you just sit and consume information.  That’s not the meeting we are talking about.  We are talking about the meeting that really needs people to express incredible creativity. The meeting where people need to solve those intangible problems that people keep saying, “we should do that some day.” 

Energy and time are needed to solve tough problems in a meeting.  Actually you need ENERGY and TIME and FOCUS.  With the proper start of each meeting you have a chance to give participants a turbo boost of all three of those things.

Energy

Energy comes from expressing a goal and instilling into others the sense of urgency to reach the goal. 

In a previous article “Change Your Meetings and Change Your Life,” I introduced Better Meeting Magic, a way to change the culture and productivity of a team, department, division or company that embodies the spirit of collaboration, inclusiveness and focus.

Then in a subsequent article, "Improve Your Focus and Improve Your Team's Performance in Meetings", recall that Planning Is Indispensable because you have created a runway to achieve high altitude performance during your meeting.  You created a meeting GOAL.  You included the GOAL in the invitation. And now you are going to paste it on the wall in the biggest font you can find.

This is step 2 "Opening" in the Better Meeting Magic.   You will open a meeting with some administrative tasks, setting expectations and preparing the participants for an excellent collaborative experience.

Tip #1: Post the Meeting Goal for High Visibility

On an 11”x17” paper print “Goal:  Decide on the Marketing Strategy and Create a List of Step to Achieve It”.  You can also write on a flip chart or even on whiteboard. It must stay as a focal point for the whole meeting, so make sure whatever surface you use to present the goals stays visible and does not get erased.  Make it public so everyone can see it and read it. You might need to revisit the goal during the session. 

Tip #2: Post Meeting Rules for Everyone to See

Also on an 11”x17” paper print “Rules: …”.  Same operating principles apply to the Rules sheet as applied to the Goals sheet.  Make it visible and keep it posted throughout the duration of the meeting.

Reiterating and publishing the goals ENERGIZES the participants because they know that this meeting will not waste time and that achieves the criteria of successful meeting key #1.  A goal also FOCUSES the participants and achieves the criteria of successful meeting key #2.  And if you start on TIME and end on TIME, you will achieve the criteria of successful meeting key #3.

Time

Allocating the correct amount of time to a meeting is essential and must be part of the planning process.  But now that you are in the meeting, you have to keep yourself and the whole party on track to achieve the goals. Part of this journey is starting on time. The end of this journey will be better appreciated if it ends on time as well.

Focus 

FOCUS is the essential ingredient to make a meeting work and you’ve started off with right foot forward if you’ve posted the Goal(s) and Rule(s) and started on time.  The rest of the meeting is going to be better because you know your purpose.  Just like an aircraft flying from Los Angeles to New York that will fly slightly off course 99% of the time, you too will continue to adjust the course of the meeting ever so slightly when you see things getting off track.

Focus! Focus! Focus!

Put time into understand the purpose of the meetings. Then post Goals and Rules.  Then monitor and gently correct.

Tip #3: Make a Parking Lot for Off Topic Ideas

I almost forgot the Parking Lot.  This is a jewel and you cannot forget to put this up on the wall as well.

In order to keep the meeting on track, explain that you have a Parking Lot and put notes into that space. Write on whiteboards or flipcharts or post sticky notes for any items that don’t fit into the context of the meeting, but are burning issue for some of the participants.  Be sure to follow-up on this items.

Do you have an interesting story about how a meeting went so off course?  Please write a comment and share your story.

Improve Your Focus and Improve Your Teams Performance in Meetings

Today I almost went batty in a meeting.  It wasn’t just me, but one of my colleagues almost went batty as well.  Why? There was disconnect on the type of information that we needed to get from participants.  Other participants were wandering from topic to topic and could not constrain themselves to find the core purpose of the dialog. I looked at my colleague and I saw the strain on his face was barely contained (he was trying to maintain a professional posture).  The person currently talking had gone down a bunny trail of technical details that sounded more like a R2-D2 beeping and chirping to C3PO.  The purpose of the meeting was to inform the product owner how to make a decision about a couple different features in the upcoming release. The talker had completely lost touch with the goal of the meeting. I held my hands and requested a pause from the stream of consciousness monologue.  I reminded the team of the meeting purpose and we began anew with a better context and refreshed understanding of our GOAL.

In layman’s terms the bad behavior described above is called lack of meeting focus.  FOCUS is the root of productive personal and collaborative efforts at work and at home.  FOCUS enables people to reach a new state of productivity that some call FLOW.  FOCUS in meetings enables all participants to police themselves and police others so the meeting can make rocket propelled progress toward the GOAL.

The GOAL of a meeting is really the key aspect of meeting planning.  It’s the core of a productive person’s arsenal against distraction, negativity, bias, closed mindedness and unimportant topics.

In my previous article, “Change Your Meetings and Change Your Life,” I introduced Better Meeting Magic, a way to change the culture and productivity of a team, department, division or company that embodies the spirit of collaboration, inclusiveness and focus.

The diagram below repeats the Better Meeting Magic flow. This article describes the “Planning” component in depth. In fact, I've already introduced the most important aspect of planning: DEFINING the GOAL. 

The Goal

As mentioned above the biggest factor in making a meeting productive is defining the outcome of the meeting.  In Stephen Covey’s seminal work, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, this is called “Habit 2 : Begin With the End In Mind.”  This powerful mechanism to challenges your brain to think about the outcome you would like.  Often a meeting is schedule because you know you need to talk about something that is blocking progress or causing friction or some collaborative decision needs to be made.  The meeting sponsor is often consumed with resolving the nagging issues, but sometimes neglects to define the core issue that must be decided before the meeting ends.

Tips for Setting a Goal: 

Tip #1: Make a goal for every meeting

When you create a meeting with your calendar application, stop before you send it and make sure the first line of the meeting description contains this line: “Goal: <fill in outcome here>”.
Force yourself to NEVER send another invite without a GOAL at the top of the calendar invite.

Tip #2: Keep your meeting goal concise

When you define the meeting Goal, make sure it has a measurable outcome.
You don’t need excess words in your life that don’t help you get to your destination.  You need explicit statements that guide the course of your meeting to a satisfying solution.

Tip #3: Make an artifact for every meeting

In the goal of your meeting, include the what artifact that you intend to create. You either want a “plan for marketing in a certain region" or a “vision statement for your department” or a “project plan with milestones for XYZ project”. 

Don’t sell yourself short and ask only for a “discussion”.  A discussion will always happen.  You want OUTCOMES.  ACTIONABLE steps.  Something that represents a DECISION or PLAN.   If you only have a discussion, you’ll have to meet again for a DECISION.  Don’t meet twice if you can meet just once.  In a later article, I’ll discuss other mechanisms to insure you manage your time and achieve your meeting goals.

Examples of good and bad meeting goals:

Good Goals:

“Goal: Discuss System Requirements for Project X and Create an Architecture Model.”

This is good because it has a specific outcome “Architectural Model.”  You might complete the meeting by finishing off a straw man architecture on a white board. Take a picture and e-mail the picture to everyone in the meeting.  GOAL ACHIEVED!

“Goal: Create an Actionable Marketing Plan for Product Y.”

This goal also has a specific outcome that you can measure, “Actionable Marketing Plan”.  You might end the meeting with a wall full of sticky notes that represent an ordered list of actions that the team will as execute.  You will take a picture of the wall, e-mail it to yourself.  Have your secretary transcribe it (or you can transcribe it) and send to everyone.  GOAL ACHIEVED!

Deficient Goal:

“Goal: Discuss the Needs of Customers in New York Region.”

While this may sound like a good goal, it does not end with an artifact.  In other words, what is the purpose of the discussion?  Do you want a sales plan?  Do you want to create a list of ideas? Do you want to create a demographic model? What is it that you want to ACHIEVE? A discussion can take place over lunch or over coffee or in the hall. You don’t want to waste time just discussing things, you really want to create something that can be instantly turned into a plan of action.

Let’s try again…

“Goal: Discuss the needs of Customers in New York Region and Create a List of the 10 Biggest Opportunities for 2016."

Now the discussion has a purpose.  It’s not a wandering meeting anymore.  The disciple of setting a GOAL is TOUGH.  This will challenge you to think a little deeper. You will spend a minute or two or three, but you will save many many minutes of people’s time and your own because you have a purpose in the discussion and everyone is now aware of that purpose.

If you know the end from the beginning, you’ll be a long way toward achieving your goals in a meeting.  It really only takes a couple moments to breath deep and put down your desired outcome.  Give this a try and see how it works to keep your meetings a little more FOCUSED.

When you think about creating a meeting, what things do you dread the most about conducting it?  Write me a comment and let me know.