How prepared are you?
Last week we shared some statistics with you. Remember them? Every day, the average person:
- Receives 153 Teams messages
- Receives 117 emails
- Gets interrupted 275 times
- Finds that 57% of their meetings are ad-hoc / not scheduled in advance
These statistics show that we’re likely to be busy at work, skidding into meetings at the very last second, with our clothes on back to front, and forgetting our own name. Sound familiar?
This seems to be totally at odds with the well-known Benjamin Franklin quote:
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”
So, how do we find the time to prepare sufficiently so that we give ourselves, and our colleagues, the best chance to succeed? Sadly, an extra hour doesn’t magically appear on its own. But preparation doesn’t need an hour, it needs a handful of small, deliberate habits, that help you to avoid bouncing from one meeting to the next like a pinball machine:
Prepare in the gap you already have. Between the meeting that just ended and the one about to begin there is usually a five-minute pause. Most of us fill that time attending to our inbox. Try using it for the next meeting instead: re-read the invite, the agenda, and the last set of notes. Five minutes of orientation is the difference between arriving as a participant and arriving as a passenger.
Do the pre-work the moment you accept the invite. When a meeting lands in your calendar, spend two minutes writing down why you are going and what you need to contribute. You are already looking at the invite; you will never be closer to the topic than you are right then. Preparation done at the point of commitment costs almost nothing. And then it can be filed in your subconscious, where the backroom brain cells get to work on your behalf.
Protect the fifteen minutes leading up to anything that matters. Block it. Give it a name that stops people from booking over it. You then have the opportunity to mentally arrive early and collect your thoughts. This will undoubtedly lead to a more effective and efficient meeting.
Prepare the people, not just yourself. A short agenda circulated the day before costs one person five minutes, and saves everyone else time in guess work and assumptions. Send the pre-reading in good time. Ask the question/s you intend to raise, to ensure that they read it. Help others arrive ready too.
Accept that some meetings will go badly, but prepare anyway. The statistics are real, and so is the skidding-in-with-your-clothes-on-back-to-front feeling. But Franklin’s warning is not a demand for perfection. It is an observation about direction: the prepared meeting and the unprepared meeting are rarely separated by a great deal of effort – usually by about ten minutes, spent on purpose.
None of this defeats the inbox, the 153 Teams messages, or the 275 interruptions. But it shifts the odds a little in favour of the colleague who walks in prepared, knows what they are there to do, and helps everyone else do the same. Which is, on reflection, the best chance we have of giving ourselves, and others, the success Franklin was talking about.
Want to move efficiently and productively from one meeting to the next? You’re In Cool Company.
