How to free your time and practice proactive leadership
We all know the feeling, you wake up with good intentions — you’re finally going to write that article, finish that report, and submit that presentation. Then you open your laptop to a sensory overload of urgent emails, instant message notifications, and crisis after crisis.
You sigh, pour yourself a coffee, and roll up your sleeves — your time is about to be derailed again by sudden, urgent meetings.
The average knowledge worker spends 23 hours a week in meetings. Since shifting to remote and hybrid working, meetings have steadily increased in duration and frequency, with people attending 13 percent more meetings than they were before.
But how many of those meetings are truly productive?
In 2020, Wundamail surveyed 20,000 remote workers across the US and UK to determine the effectiveness of remote meetings. From those 20,000 people they found:
· 56% wished they spent less time on video calls
· 42% reported they frequently had to attend meetings where they contributed nothing
· 33% suffered from a lack of focus during video calls
What’s more, people were three times more likely to deliver on actions agreed upon in writing rather than via video, as they failed to remember key information after finishing a video call. After a remote/hybrid meeting ended, 42% of workers then followed up via written communication to clarify actions, and 30% admitted they require further phone calls and email correspondence following a meeting to clarify essential information.
This research is alarming and contributes to a growing body of evidence showing that we are in fact harnessing the power of technology to make us less productive, create less value, and frankly are working wrong.
Back-to-back meetings create an illusion of productivity
There was one other finding that caught my eye in Wundamail’s research.
73% of respondents regarded video-conferencing as “getting work done”. 14,600 people from a sample of 20,000 believe work = meetings.
Many people, it seems, hold a misguided belief that squeezing in more and more meetings means they are being more productive.
Now I understand that some people are required to be in meetings more than others, but if the majority of knowledge workers are in meetings the majority of the time, and the majority of those meetings are unproductive, surely something is wrong?
Proactive versus reactive leadership
The reason I’m concerned about the current meeting overload culture, is the trade-off being proactive and reactive work.
The nature of back-to-back meetings often causes us to focus on things that are reactive and urgent — you respond to hundreds of emails, you attend urgent meetings, and you deal with client crisis after client crisis. What makes reactivity so dangerous is that it feels productive. But you are not practicing proactive leadership.
When you’re reactive, you are not in control — circumstances are controlling you. The majority of your workday is dictated by unproductive influences you can’t seem to say no to — your teammates, your clients, etc.
But things that will truly move your business forward are rarely reactive and urgent; they’re proactive. If you spend the bulk of your time in meetings and responding to emails — you will have little time left to think, create and lead.
The best leaders keep an empty calendar
The busier your diary gets, the more you need to build thinking time into your schedule. Being constantly occupied doesn’t give our minds time to think in new ways or allow time for creative thoughts to form.
There are numerous examples of some of the world’s best leaders practicing this approach:
Jeff Weiner, while CEO of Linkedin — scheduled up to two hours of uninterrupted time on his calendar every day, “in response to a schedule that was becoming so jammed with back-to-back meetings that I had little time left to process what was going on around me or just think”. Initially, he reported he felt like these time slots were an indulgence, but now credits it as the single most important productivity tool he used.
Jeff Bezos, while CEO of Amazon — has been known to keep up to two days per week free to think, generate new ideas and take a long-term perspective; and avoid being in reactive mode.
Bill Gates, while CEO of Microsoft — has habitually taken a week off (twice a year) simply to read and think, stating “you know, I had every minute packed and I thought that was the only way you could do things….but sitting and thinking is a much higher priority”.
Richard Branson, while CEO of Virgin — recommended scheduling time just to dream. In a 2017 memo, he wrote, “Far too many people get weighed down in doing, and never take the time to think and feel. By scheduling time to think freely — whether it’s an hour, a day, or even a holiday — you’ll be able to see the bigger picture much easier,”.
If you’re anything like me — you probably struggle with inbound meeting requests that all seem important, from clients, collaborators, and so on. But lets me be honest, you’re probably not as in demand as Weiner, Bezo, Gates, or Branson.
Five (simple) techniques for better time management
If you want to practice strategic, proactive leadership you need to find a way to free your diary from meeting purgatory. While I confess, I haven’t mastered this yet, the following techniques are helping me better manage my time and reduce my meeting load:
1) Establish a proactivity ratio: There’s a golden rule touted by productivity gurus — never schedule more than half your day with meetings. It’s a good concept but for a lot of people, this simply isn’t realistic. For me, I know every day I’ll need to spend a certain amount of time on meetings and emails, so rather than a 50:50 split I aim to allocate 30% of my time to proactive work, 50% of my time to meetings, 20% of my time to emails.
This simple metric, measured daily helps me assess how I’m spending my time and when things go wrong, explore why.
2) Plan your day the night before: Planning your day the night before helps clarify what your most important tasks are the following day. You can then schedule those tasks on your calendar and deprioritize meetings that aren’t going to add much value. If you have no clarity about what it is you’re trying to achieve the following day, you’ll be busy, but not productive. Not proactive.
3) Do the most important task first: Rather than starting your day distracted by meetings, emails, and notifications, use the first hour or so to get your most important task done. Not only will this improve your productivity, but it will increase your feeling of control and positivity knowing you’ve achieved something. Win the morning, win the day.
4) Delegate where you can: There are likely to be several meetings on your calendar where outright skipping isn’t an option, but where you may not need to attend personally. Delegating those meetings to someone else in your team could be a great move: it frees up time on your calendar and gives someone else a chance to practice new skills.
5) Batch and hack your meetings: Forgive me for stating an obvious solution, but you should make sure to review your calendar at the end of each day and batch meetings where possible, to create periods of uninterrupted time. Hacking meeting lengths can also create time savings — if a meeting is 60 minutes make it 45 minutes. If 30 minutes, make it 20 minutes. The people requesting the meeting may initially feel uncomfortable about this, but it will focus the conversation and free up considerable time.
Being busy isn’t a sign of good leadership
Whether it’s two hours a day or two days a week, you need to make a point of blocking time out in your diary specifically to think. This thinking space is vital in order to practice proactive leadership and focus your energy on the work that creates real value for your business.
A back-to-back calendar is not a proxy for how important you are.
It is a sign of a leader who doesn’t know how to set and hold clear boundaries, manage their time, or dedicate time to thinking.
