Future Work Habits: Are Shorter Meetings More Productive?

It’s important to note that shorter meetings haven’t always been the answer to boosted productivity. Before the internet as we know it, meetings were the lifeline for many businesses. But the world is different now.

Apart from instant messaging and email often replacing the need to meet, workers themselves have changed. Many start-ups are already capping their meetings to a maximum of 30 minutes. In some cases, people are limiting meetings to 15 minutes.

How Do You Achieve a Productive 15 Minutes Meeting ?

Here’s how technology can assist save time while effectively briefing the team.

Usage Of Bots & Electronic Messaging: Some firms are cutting meeting times to as little as 15 minutes, by sending more advanced information, reducing the number of participants and using bots to organize communication.

Also questions stimulate the mind, Adding questions rather than statements to an agenda also helps with efficiency.

Reasons Why Having Less Time For Meetings Boosts Productivity

Less time means fewer distractions and increased engagement. While there are conflicting studies on the average length of adult attention spans, the shorter the meeting, the less time available to become distracted and tune out.

When attendees don’t tune out, they engage—even if it’s as small as a head nod. Less time means reduced burn out. If attendees can see they only have 20 minutes to get through a meeting, they simply won’t waste time. They’ll get to the point quicker, because there’s no time for anything else.

Less time obligates supervisors to prepare beforehand, hence avoiding unnecessary conversations and debates usually spout out of confusion due to the absence of a predefined agenda.
Less time means the ability to hyper-focus on a single topic.
Less time means fewer distractions and increased engagement.
Less time means reduced burn out; Note that a Microsoft study found that back-to-back meetings increase stress on the brain.

In today’s world of remote and hybrid work, it’s not sufficient to only encourage self-care. We need to innovate and leverage technology to help employees operationalize much-needed breaks into their daily routines.