Other people's meetings
I've published a lot of data about meetings. A couple of years back, I collected a corpus of 1,100+ hours of recorded meetings and found that more people participate when meetings are in-person, particularly women. I also found that in person, people are more likely to have conversations where they disagree.
At the time I was doing this analysis, I had very few meetings myself. My calendar had gone from CEO chaos to just a couple of hours of meetings a day. In other words, I had lots of time on my hands to dig into the data behind other people's meetings.
Now that my own calendar is full again, I'm rediscovering something: Regardless of how many meetings I have in total or their priority, some meetings energize me, while others wipe me out completely.
Your calendar tells the truth
Whenever someone says that they don't know what their priorities are, I suggest they look at the last few weeks of their calendar. Whatever you claim your priorities are, your calendar tells the truth. The way you spend your time, especially when you're busy and have to make tradeoffs, shows what you really value.
Most people doing this exercise find that they are not prioritizing the way they intend. The exercise helps you make more intentional choices about your time, so you end up happier and more productive.
I love this exercise and I analyze my own calendar every few months. When I took a look recently, this is how I was distributing my time across typical working hours:
That's a lot of time in meetings, and there are things I should deprioritize to get more focus time. I don't like having a calendar that is booked solid all day, every day. But honestly, some packed days deplete me much more than others. I wanted to get beyond the classic calendar analysis and figure out why.
For me, and maybe for you, the kind of meeting matters.
I ❤️ engineers
I need some downtime at the end of any day that is packed with meetings. However, my social energy rebounds more quickly on some days than others.
Loosely speaking, I experience my meetings in two dimensions:
- Meetings with people inside my team vs. outside my team (e.g. customers, investors, partners)
- Meetings where I am one participant of many vs. where I have to show up as a leading voice
I am not a total extrovert, so any day that is all meetings with no time to recharge tires me me out. But internal meetings are much less exhausting for me than external ones.
I spent two weeks jotting down how I felt at the end of each day. Then I mapped this sentiment against the proportion of my daily meeting time that was spent internally vs. externally.
In the chart below, the days when I felt energized are marked with green happy faces. The days when I felt neutral or depleted are marked in grey and red respectively.
In other words, I enjoy packed meeting days more if I'm spending them with my team. I can tolerate near-limitless meetings working on stuff with PMs, engineers, and sales people.
External meetings are more tiring for me. Except for public speaking, which I could do every day for infinite hours. It's complicated.
Even internally, though, some meetings are more draining than others. It costs differently to be one of many participants in a discussion than to engage vocally throughout the meeting. Having too many consecutive meetings where I am a social focal point is tougher than including some where I am largely listening. This is true even if I like the individual meetings.
I am a lot of fun at parties, but only when I go
People who know me only a little are sometimes surprised to learn that I am not an extrovert. I fake it pretty well, especially at work. In the right social setting, I show up with genuine social enthusiasm and big energy.
For instance, I often enjoy parties once I get there, but I have a lifetime pattern of trying to avoid going. I usually push through and am glad of it later, but it takes effort.
The same is true for me with work meetings. I enjoy most of them while I'm having them. But having too many of the wrong kind on a single day wipes me out, so I've learned to schedule intentionally.
The bottom line: If your work days are feeling out of whack, like you're not accomplishing your stated priorities and aren't sure why, you'd be well-served by doing the classic calendar analysis to figure out where your time is going.
But consider taking it one step further and keeping track of which days energize you and which others drain you. What I discovered is helping me!
Kieran
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