Being Careful About Your Time
Busy doesn’t always equal productivity; often, it’s the opposite…
Last week was the busiest I can recall being in a long time. Normally, in a busy week, by Friday, my brain is mush. But last week, it was basically in such a state at the end of each individual day. Looking at my calendar, it’s easy to see why. A sea of meetings. And this coming week is actually worse.
As if reading my mind, a video appeared in my Facebook feed this morning speaking directly to this. In a joint interview with Charlie Rose, Bill Gates is sharing a key bit of insight he gained from Warren Buffett:
Gates: I also remember Warren showing me his calendar. I had every minute packed and I thought that was the only way you could do things. The fact that he is so careful about his time. You know, he has days that there’s nothing on it.Buffett (laughing): Absolutely, those are the best ones.Rose (looking at the planner): This is a week of April, of which there are only three entries for a week. Buffett (laughing): Yeah, there will be four maybe by April. Gates (joking): Yeah, file tax return…Rose: That taught you what? Not to crowd yourself too much? Give yourself time to read and think?Gates: Right. That you control your time. And that sitting and thinking may be of much higher priority than a normal CEO who, you know, there’s all this demand, and you feel like you need to go and see all these people. It’s not a proxy of your seriousness that you've filled every minute in your schedule.
Buffett’s proclivity for setting aside time to read and think is well known. But it’s pretty shocking just how regimented he is about it. Again, no meetings.
Look, everyone loathes meetings. Well, except maybe the jokers who like to call meetings in a sadistic power move in the office. No matter how important the subject of the meeting may be, there are always far too many crevices of time in which meaningless minutia gets inserted. Even the most efficient meetings could be studies in inefficiency.
They are, by and large, time sinks. Sinkholes that are disguised as work and/or productivity. They’re often the opposite. Facades, as Gates notes.
Obviously some meetings, maybe even most, can’t be avoided. Especially if you work in an office environment where such schedules are set outside of your control. Maybe use these tips if that’s the case. Regardless, that should just be a call to be even more stringent on your time outside the office.
I particularly dislike (I reserve the word “hate” for email) meetings because aside from the time suck of the meeting itself, I find it hard to decompress from them afterwards. My head is filled with whatever was discussed and the subsequent tasks that undoubtedly resulted. And these meetings and their aftereffects compound in my head. Again, to the point where at the end of a busy week, I’m almost unable to function. And if a single day is filled with enough meetings, say five or six or seven, I’m left almost dizzy.
Plenty of people take far more meetings than I do — my wife, for one. But somehow she and others are able to manage their cognitive load better. I’m often rendered useless. Always have been, always will be.
I’ve tried various hacks over the years. 30 minute meetings, for example — which always seem to creep back towards an hour… But the best hack is simply not to agree to superfluous meetings in the first place.
And yet, this is much easier said than done.
In a vacuum, one meeting is just one meeting. It’s an hour of your time. But in aggregate, days and weeks are the casualty of such meetings. You could quite literally waste a good portion of your life in meetings if you agreed to all of them.
Back to Buffett:
Buffett: People are going to want your time. That’s the only thing you can’t buy. I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can’t buy time.Rose: So to have time is the most precious thing you can have.Buffett: It is. I better be careful with it. There’s no way I will be able to buy more time.
That two of the most successful people on our planet think about it this way sure seems telling. Sure, they may be in a position of luxury to make such statements now, but at least in the case of Buffett, he would undoubtedly argue that he got to where he is thanks to such an approach.
The framework should be simple: what are you getting out of a meeting? It’s obviously reasonable if you’re helping someone else with the meeting. But even that time spent in such meetings can add up just as much as in any other meeting. You really have to think about it that way.
That is, if you have the time to think.
