Time to Set a Meeting with Yourself

Feel like constant meetings are hanging you up? Set a regular meeting with yourself. 

Meetings and more meetings. Just as you finish one call, you are dialing into the next one. Need to go for toilet break? Forget it -- there’s another meeting. This meeting situation was already insane before the pandemic, and it it has only gotten worse now with so many people working from home.  
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There are dozens of articles about how to spend less time in meetings, how to reject meetings without looking bad, about 2/3 of our life being spent in meetings. All these articles trying to help us save ourselves. Yet many of us keep falling into the meeting trap. I have yet to find the magic formula for myself, however I do believe I am becoming more aware about how I am actually spending my time versus how I want to spend my time.

Here’s what I’ve done: 
​I blocked my calendar for a 2-hour meeting with myself one Friday morning a month. At this meeting with myself, I reflect on my activities. This has helped me to become more focused, improve as a professional and be more aware of how I use my time. One Friday morning per month, I ask myself questions like these:

1. What have I done well this month?
2. What did I learn?
3. How have I grown?
4. What type of leadership have I shown?
5. Which emotions were prevalent in me?       
6. How was my energy level?
7. What was my biggest accomplishment?
8. What could I have done better?
9. What can I take with me as I move forward?
10. What do I want to leave behind?
11. What do I want to achieve in the following month?

 
To answer these questions, I look through my calendar for the past month and reflect on what I can do to improve my performance.

If you try this for yourself, you might notice that you have had a more assertive/challenging style of leadership. Or you may observe that your primary emotions were frustration and anger, and that your energy tank tended to be half empty all the time. Awareness of these issues could be the trigger you need to figure out how to change your behaviour in order to better achieve a desired result.
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Without realising it, we often operate on autopilot. Setting some time apart to reflect, effectively turns off autopilot and allows us to take control back again.

So, why not try it? Set a monthly 1:1 with yourself in your calendar, grab a Nespresso cup of coffee, put on some music, relax and enjoy answering some questions about you, for you.  

​By Davide Costella
Photo credit: Pexels
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Contact Davide Costella to schedule an initial chat or one of our other professional coaches