themadpeacock

As a manager running a team or a company everyone wants a piece of your time. So you prioritize, organize and fit as many valuable meetings into a day as possible. But you should cancel at least 50% of them and here’s why.

Most of your meetings are probably internal. Weekly meeting with marketing, development, IT, Sales, HR and Finance teams. Throw into that a bunch of meetings or calls with investors & the board, department heads requesting budgets or updating you on projects, the hour you carve out of each day for email (most of it internal) and your day is full.

Have you ever noticed how fired up you and your team are after a trade show or road trip? Why is that? You spent the day listening to customers!

They told you about their business, their needs, gave you feedback on what you were doing right for them and more importantly what you were doing wrong. All that information, everything you learnt is giving you the buzz that made you start the business in the first place. Problems to solve, opportunities to explore and deals to close in an industry you love. (if you don’t get out now)

Danny Brown posted a nice peace on this phenomenon; it struck a cord with me because I have fallen into this trap a few times myself.

You’re permanently in meetings that you’ve arranged that don’t need to happen – the earth won’t fall away if you miss one of them. Simply put, you’re so busy that your life is one big “Do Not Disturb” sign.

Your competitors, on the other hand, like to be disturbed. They like new ideas from the many. They like phone calls; emails; faxes. They like meetings that only happen when… well, when something happens or needs to.

via Danny Brown’s blog

I am getting better at spotting the symptoms; increased stress, diminishing results, crackberry dependence, insular opinions and lack of job satisfaction

Know the signs and break the habit.