Work a 4-day week without overloading on meetings
You start with excitement at the accomplishment of getting your new schedule approved: “Yes! I negotiated a four-day work week. This will give me the opportunity to have a bit more breathing room on my extra day off.”
Then disillusionment sets in: Why can’t I get all of my work done? Why does it feel like all I do is attend meetings? How is it that I often end up working five days when I’m supposed to have an extra day off ?
If these statements sound familiar, you may need some help adjusting five-day’s worth of meetings and tasks into four-day’s worth of time. You may feel you have so many responsibilities to cram into your shortened work week, you don’t have any time to get work done.
As a time management coach, I help my clients think about how to invest their time strategically, so they can maximize their productivity within the hours they want to work. Here are my top five tips for working a four-day week and having time for more than just sitting in meetings.
Step 1: Define your hours
If you’ve transitioned from five, 8-hour days to four, 10-hour days, the scope of your work hasn’t likely changed too much. But if your intention with working four days a week is to only spend 80% of your week on work, then you’re also looking to change your schedule, in addition to changing your workload. To shift both, it may require you to take certain responsibilities off of your plate. Or, it could mean reducing the expectations from your superior on turnaround, so that you can work at a slower pace.
Step 2: Block your time
If you are working four, 10-hour days, I recommend blocking the beginning and end of your days, at minimum, so that no one can schedule meetings with you. Not only does this reserve time for you to get things done, it decreases the probability that people in your meetings will just be waking up or exhausted from working a full day.
Another strategy is to block the first half of your day when you’re at your desk as “on-ramp” time, and then the last half of the day on your final work day as “wrap-up” time. However, if you know you have a big project on your docket, you’ll likely need to block additional time.
Whether you’re working reduced hours or simply a shortened-day schedule, these buffers can give you the opportunity to ease into your workweek and to end without feeling like you have a lot of loose ends.
Step 3: Reduce recurring meetings
Moving to a four-day work week offers a good opportunity to re-evaluate all of your recurring meetings and ask yourself: Does this meeting really need to be on my schedule?
In particular, think about meetings where it feels like there’s not a lot of new information to talk about each week, you don’t gain or give much, or where there is redundancy with multiple individuals from your team present. See if you can eliminate these meetings from your schedule entirely. Or, if this is not possible, consider shortening the length of the meetings or reducing their frequency.
Also, if you have some say in when recurring meetings are scheduled, try to group them together so you have certain segments of the day that are heavier on meetings and other parts of the day that are naturally more open to get things done.
Step 4: Reject ad hoc meetings
Some ad hoc meetings can provide tremendous value. Sometimes, a few minutes on the phone or in the hallway can help you solve more than a mountain of emails.
However, some impromptu meetings are less necessary and fracture your day into broken and inefficient portions of time.
In my world, I try to get myself out of as many of these meetings as possible, since I know even the briefest of chats can add up. If someone emails me, particularly from outside my business, and wants to set up a meeting to explain something, I’ll reply by first asking for more information.
Usually, I can skim through what they send in less than a minute at a convenient time for me, instead of having to take 15 minutes to talk when I could be focusing on a complex task.
Step 5: Run meetings efficiently
With returning back to the office, it’s nice to have some time during meetings to catch up with one another. Yes, not every minute of meetings needs to be the epitome of efficiency, but it is good to run meetings in an effective and efficient manner. That means going into meetings understanding the objective, sticking to the main points, and getting clarity on next steps. And, as a bonus, it’s helpful to have someone write down the meeting notes and share them with the group, so people can remember and act on what was discussed.