Boost Your Productivity – Time Block Your Meetings

Let’s face it – small business owners attend a lot of meetings. We have to! We need to: network to make new connections; meet with new prospects and customers to sell our products or services to stay in business; meet with business partners to build beneficial relationships; and attend training to sharpen our skills. But all of these meetings take time from our schedules which can drastically affect our productivity.

To understand what I’m talking about, can you relaDo you want to be more productive than you ever have been before? Do you want to be more productive than you ever have been before? te to this scenario?

You’re knee deep in a project and your thoughts and ideas are flowing. You look at the clock and realize you have to get to a meeting. You scramble to save your work, grab the stuff you need for the meeting and head out the door. Two or three hours later, you return to your office, ready to get back to your project. But you can’t remember exactly where you were in the process or where you were headed with it. So you have to go back over everything you did earlier. And all those brilliant thoughts and ideas you had before – well, poof!! They’re gone. The next hour is spent trying to get your mojo going again. Until finally, you can get back into the groove and complete your project.

Frustrating, isn’t it?

But it doesn’t have to be that way if you schedule your time efficiently. I recommend you time block your meetings along with all of your other tasks. One way you can do this, is to schedule all your meetings for two specific days of the week. During the other three days, you would schedule and work on all of your projects and tasks.

However, to effectively schedule and time block your meetings, you need to:

• Minimize your travel time. When scheduling meetings on a specific day, select one location or area of town for all your meetings to reduce your travel time. Or, in lieu of meeting face to face, consider having a phone conversation or video conference instead.
• Schedule your travel time. Block out enough time on your daily schedule for travel. Figure in an extra 15 minutes to allow for traffic and other delays.
• Stick to your meeting time allotment. If you schedule one hour to meet, only meet for one hour. Otherwise, if you go over, it’ll affect all of your subsequent meetings.
• Schedule preparation and debrief time. When you set your appointments, schedule time to prepare for your meetings. Additionally, at the end of each meeting, set aside a few minutes to complete your notes and to put any action items on your calendar.

When you time block your meetings, you’ll find that your productivity will increase; and you’ll be able to meet your obligations more effectively.

To your success!

B^{3 –} Be Bold, Brilliant and Boundless!