How to Manage Your To-Do List When You’re Always in Meetings
On days when you have far too much to do — back to back deadlines, overflowing inbox, multiple meetings — here’s how you get yourself in line for SUCCESS.
Each day, you write down a bunch of stuff on your to-do list app, perhaps you even assign it a time. But at the end of the day, you have hardly made it halfway into the list. You’ve been going to back-to-back meetings all day and you didn’t get the time to get all your other work done. Well, that’s pretty obvious since it takes around 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back on what you were working on before a meeting.
At first, I used to wonder why people hated meetings so much. To me, meetings were like an excellent opportunity to brainstorm conversations, resolve issues, and achieve the desired outcome. Of course, over time, I got my answer.
Not every meeting you attend ends up on an interesting, productive note. Most of the meetings are inefficient, unproductive, and a complete waste of everyone’s time. It’s an elephant in the meeting room that no one ever discusses.
Not so surprisingly, it does not just waste an organization’s (or an individual’s) time — it wastes money too. And apparently a lot. According to recent workplace stats, more than $37 billion per year is spent on unproductive meetings. Wait! It gets worse. Even after spending all that time and money:
Executives consider more than 67 percent of meeting to be failures.
The good news is that there’s still room for improvement. We CAN’T stop having meetings at work (that’s not an option). But what we CAN really do is make some teeny tiny changes to our everyday work routine.
As someone who has had days of back-to-back meetings (and knows how to get work done no matter what), I’ve got a few tips for how to get through a day of endless meetings and still get things done on your to-do list.
How do you organize your to-do list?
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Make the to-do list the night before
Before you go to bed, consider writing down the tasks that you will be doing the next day. Make it a part of your everyday evening routine.
I too have the habit to keep everything scheduled in my to-do list the night before. This habit of mine has helped me get more free time in the day for my favorite activities like catching my yoga class and sticking to my workouts while knocking items off my to-do list at work.
Follow the 1–3–5 rule
What do you do when your list is too long? Have you ever heard of or tried the 1–3–5 rule? It’s a rule, as reported by The Muse, that allows you to tackle nine items from your to-do list in a day — not too many, not too few.
The concept is simple — you take all the tasks that need to be done in the day and split them up using the 1–3–5 rule. You keep one large project to tackle in the day (your “1”) along with three medium-sized tasks (your “3”), and, finally, five small tasks that are easy to take care of (your “5”).
Prioritize the tasks on your to-do list
You probably already know — when you set priorities for tasks, you have a better chance of getting everything done. Whether you’re listing tasks/goals for the day or for the upcoming week, you must jot down the list in order from most to least urgent.
This simple habit allows you to spend more time and energy on the right things. However, if you’re struggling to prioritize all of the items on your to-do list, ask yourself these three key questions to gain better clarity:
- Does this absolutely need to be done today?
- Does this need to be done by me?
- Does this need to be done at all?
Make your to-do list public (include scheduled meetings, if possible)
This is possibly the best way to make sure that you’re not trapped in any unnecessary meeting and stay accountable for the other stuff you have on your to-do list. Try sharing your to-do list with your team.
You can consider using a to-do list app, a task management tool, or a digital calendar where everyone on your work team can access your schedules and to-do list. This will help you (and every other member of your team) to get a clearer idea of each other’s availability before anyone asks for an additional favor at work.
Leverage the psychological effect of scratching tasks off
I’ve tried all sorts of digital versions of to-do lists, but there is something about scratching tasks off a physical list that makes me happy. For all these years, I’ve been relying on pen and paper for one main reason.
Trust me! It’s incredibly rewarding. You just have to grab a notebook or a piece of paper to write down all the tasks that you have planned for the day and every time you finish a task — just scratch it off the list and reward yourself with something good.
Create a daily summary (be specific)
I have the habit of creating a detailed daily summary at the end of each day. It gives me a clearer idea of my accomplishments and setbacks in the day. The summary usually includes all the projects, tasks, and milestones that I have worked on or achieved during the day.
In ProofHub, you have this feature where you can create notebooks and save notes in specific projects. The feature comes in pretty handy when you need one place to save all your project-related details, including minutes of meetings, project agendas, daily progress reports, project summaries, and more. Go ahead! Sign up and get a free trial.
How can you reduce unnecessary meetings?
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Before you accept a meeting invite, make sure you’re needed
There are often times (in fact, a lot) when we say YES to meetings as an automatic and unthinking response. And most of the times, you don’t necessarily have to be there.
As Edith Onderick-Harvey, founder of Andover, a performance and productivity consultancy says: “just because they hold it, doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be there”. The best solution to this problem is to learn to check every aspect and make sure you’re really needed before you accept an invite or block time in your calendar for a meeting. If you can skip the meeting/discussion, do it.
Keep track of your hours
We all think that we are pretty good at gauging how much time we usually spend on various activities (tasks and appointments) in a day. However, there are studies that suggest only 17 percent of us are actually able to accurately estimate the time we’re spending on various activities.
Using a dedicated time tracking software like ProofHub can help a lot in such situations. You can use the software to know exactly how much time you spend on daily tasks as well as meetings. You can also spot distractions, potential productivity killers, and use all the gathered time data to plan and schedule your days better.
Take advantage of those bits of in-between time
There are days when you’re in luck at work. Sometimes your meetings end early. Sometimes they get canceled. And sometimes you complete a few tasks ahead of the scheduled deadline.
If you think smartly and make some wise use of those spare moments, you can really use your day to your advantage. Along with your original to-do list, create another list including everything that can be done in under five minutes. Work on this second list whenever you find yourself with a few minutes to spare between meetings and tasks. That will speed things up.
Go digital with workplace collaboration
Technology has revamped how we work and how business is being operated on a global scale. This rise in telecommuting is something that every professional and every project team is looking forward to.
One of the biggest reasons why most people hate meetings so much because in most cases, meetings are scheduled for matters that can be handled through low-profile communication means — such as online discussions and audio/video messages. Instead of scheduling a meeting for an everyday work update, ask everyone to share their project/task update through a group chat. This will save everyone a lot of time and allow them to focus on doing some actual work.
Set aside 2–4 hours where no one can pull you away from your work
“Know your own patterns well enough to know what time of day you do your best work, so you don’t schedule meetings in the middle of that time” — I think Marta Turek, Associate Director of Digital Marketing Programs at digital marketing agency ROI DNA, has a point there.
You should know your golden hours in a day so that you can dedicate them to get most of the work done in that time, without any distractions. Keep your most productive hours in mind while you create blocks of time in your calendar dedicated to your work. Make sure that you don’t schedule meetings in the middle of that time. Practice blocking out 2–4 hours every day in your calendar for uninterrupted work and you will see the results in your everyday productivity levels.
Wrapping up
Having a meeting-full day stinks. However, it’s not impossible to survive a day like that and still get everything done from your to-do list (after all, if I can do it, you can, too). Consider keeping the above tips in mind the next time you have too many meetings scheduled in a day or a never-ending to-do list (or both).
Put each of them into practice and find out what works best for your tight schedule at work. Once you figure that out, you will also start seeing great changes in your work, life, and everyday productivity.
If you find this post helpful, share it with your colleagues so that they can also learn to survive an overwhelming day of endless meetings and still get their to-do list done. What other productivity tricks do you know that can help people stay productive on a busy day? Share it in the comments below!
Author Bio: Sandeep Kashyap is the Founder and CEO of ProofHub, a leading project management and collaboration software. He is constantly working to fill the communication gap between groups, organizations, and teams with his innovative ideas and unique business approaches. Through his experience and articles, he wants to inspire people to do their best work.
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