The art of the 20-minute meeting

0:03 Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is that you can accomplish a lot in 20 minutes. With a well-constructed 20-minute meeting, you can fit more conversations into your day or build in more open space for executing on all the smart decisions you make. So I've always found it interesting that almost all meetings are scheduled for 30 or 60 minutes. It seems improbable that all decisions can be made in exactly 30 or 60 minutes.

0:49 And of course, they can't be. These are simply the defaults on most people's electronic calendars. Now, the fact that both of these are defaults opens up an obvious opportunity If you've generally been defaulting to 60 minutes, you might try defaulting to 30 and seeing what happens. People can always request longer if they need it, but aiming for 30 minutes for most things might impose some schedule discipline.

1:23 Of course, if you can successfully default to 30, then this suggests an obvious next step, defaulting to a little less. You always want to end meetings a few minutes early so people can move to their next meeting, or go to the bathroom, or consolidate their next steps. Formalizing this punctuality in the form of 20-minute meetings means you structure your schedule to allow for these quick breaks. Now, aiming for 20 minutes if you've been doing 30 minutes or even 60 will require some work. You can't be careless with time. But that's okay. Defaulting to 20 minutes means you'll aim to produce 20-minute agendas. And if you think about it, for many things, that will be quite doable.

2:16 For instance, you could open with a minute of chit-chat or updates. In the next minute, you could introduce the problem requiring a decision. You could then present arguments for two minutes for three different options. If people know they only have two minutes to present, they will get down to what matters fast. With any luck, they will really think this through ahead of time. Then you might have eight minutes for discussion. Perhaps that doesn't sound like a lot, and it certainly isn't for something completely freewheeling. But if you're aiming for a 20-minute meeting, you will only have people in the room who can actually make the decision.

2:59 Three of you discussing for eight minutes with some structure might just get to a decision. You lock it down for a minute or so and then assign next steps. You might even have 30 seconds to talk about what you could do better next time. Brilliant. Now, some decision meetings are going to need to be longer, but I find the 20-minute default is particularly good for those quick chats people request when they really just want an answer or for getting to know you calls. If you have a lot of people looking for advice, you could do three 20-minute calls in the time it would have taken you to do two 30-minute calls. So you'll grow your network faster. Plus, giving people a little less time will encourage them to think about what they are going to

3:45 say and maybe do a little more research beforehand. That will keep them from asking questions that don't require you for an answer. Time is valuable. We may all say that, but the truth is that defaulting to traditional meeting lengths does not support the idea that time is valuable. Because in setting a default time, you aren't thinking about how long something takes. You are thinking about how long a calendar gives you. But there's no reason to think this way.

4:19 If you are never going to default, well, in general, shortening meetings will encourage discipline and clarity. And those are very good things. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening. And here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media. For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.