 Everyone's time is valuable. They probably have a lot of other meetings or they probably want to get to their work. I feel like there's a personal attack on me. I mean, I may have been in a few meetings with Neely that I mean, can't figure out his audio. Neely, did you know that the average American spends four and a half hours in general status update meetings every week? Did you know I'm above average then? Woo, that's not good. This is not what we want to be doing with our time. Right, so tell us a little about how to not waste time in this meeting because I need help. So my very first tip, it's pretty obvious. It's pretty basic, but assign a leader for the meeting. This person's going to be in charge of the agenda. They're going to be in charge of running the ship, making sure that we get to all the items that we need to. They're the captain of the ship. They're the captain of the ship. Look at me. You are the captain now, not me. I don't want that responsibility. You're always the captain. Yeah, I'll be a skipper. Is that what they're called? You can be the skipper, yep. All right, cool. What else do we got? What are some of the tips? So the next thing is having an agenda. Just going into the meeting and riffing and not having a plan is a waste of time. No one likes it. People are, why are we here? So making sure that you have an agenda of all the items that you need to talk about and discuss. You can send that out before the meeting or you can just do it at the same time. And when you send your meeting invite out, just include all the bullet points. So people know what to expect. They can come prepared if they need to. And then you, if you're the meeting leader or the captain, you know where you're going with the meeting. Yeah, and I think it's super helpful to send that agenda. Cause I know when I get a meeting request and it's just a meeting, I have no idea what's going on. And I know that meeting is going to be a waste of time cause no one really has any clear direction. There's no captain. There's no agenda. You're already spending four and a half hours of your week in other meetings. Again, above average, just way more than four and a half hours. A day. So it's super helpful to me. Is that why I know, cool. This is what we're talking about. I can come prepared like you said. I can make sure that we stay on track. Cause I know we have three or four of the things that we have to take care of. And we're still messing around with like topic number one. It's going to be an unproductive meeting. We're going to have to just do that boat. Along with having the agenda, you want to have someone who's assigned to be the note taker and they don't have to sit there and transcribe every um and pause and word, right? Right, like that person in the court that has to do everything. Yeah, no. We don't want that. We don't need those. We're not paying for those. But this can be someone who you could either be the person who is running the meeting and they could take notes after the fact and then send them out. Or maybe if that person is too busy, they're running a presentation and they're going to be really involved. You can assign someone else to do this, but it's just important because there will be a lot of things talked about and you want to make sure to capture key action items. So that way people know what to do after the meeting. Yeah, and I think it's super helpful for in case someone misses the meeting too, like they have that agenda of what was talked about some action items. So that way they don't have to do another meeting to follow up with them. They already know what to talk about or what they need to do on their part. The next tip for having an efficient meeting is to have a time limit. So, and this is normally when you're sending out the invite, you're going to say it's 30 minutes, it's 60 minutes. Sometimes it may just be a quick sync up and it's 15 minutes, but whatever that is, you need to stick with that time because everyone's time is valuable. They probably have a lot of other meetings or they probably want to get to their work, right? So you don't want to just go over all the time and waste people's time, really be cognizant of that and stick to it. And I would add to that, like you really want to block out time for each topic. So if topic A, you want to take 15 minutes, topic B, 10 minutes, and really with just the meeting itself, take the time you need to do the meeting and no more. I've been to countless meetings where they just schedule an hour because they thought we were going to take an hour. Why not? And Park's law, however much time you give yourself to complete a task, that's how long it's going to take that long, right? So if you give yourself an hour, we're just going to talk and talk and talk for an hour when it could have been condensed in 15, 20 minutes or been sent in an email, right? So, just block out that time and really make sure that it's the efficient time needed. My next tip, and this is the wave of the future, everyone is doing this, is add video conferencing to your meetings. So that way, if you have people who are remote, and this is becoming more and more common here at GoDaddy, we have all sorts of offices around the world. So that way, people don't have to be in person for the meeting, they can just call in wherever they are. And the great thing about video is it keeps people really engaged. You're not just on a phone, listening to voices in a conference room. You can actually see someone and react to them and work with them, and it's really, really great. Yeah, I know personally, it's really easy for me to get distracted. If I know the camera's not on, I don't have to really give them my full attention so I can be doing like 15 other things. Keeping that video on and make sure that I don't do anything dumb in the video, right? I'm tuned in, I'm going to listen. It's like you're there in person. Yeah. Yeah. So going along with video conferencing, the next tip is making sure that your audio is working. This is one of the biggest things because I feel like every day, there's just someone's headset's not working or their audio is off or someone's dog is barking or there's a delivery truck driving by. So make sure you're in a good place so you can have nice, clean audio but then also make sure that your audio, whether it's a headset or AirPods or headphone, whatever, just maybe your computer, that it's working ahead of time because there's nothing worse than spending 15 minutes waiting for Person X to figure their audio out. I feel like there's a personal attack on me. I mean, I may have been in a few meetings with Neely that I mean can't figure out his audio. It's a new headset. I was trying to figure it out. That's what they all say. Probably should I test it ahead of time? Yeah. So just call in a few minutes early, test your headset, get ready to go. Boom, off we go with the meeting. Our last tip is very relevant for the digital age but it's ask people to silence their digital distractions. Yes. You hear that? It's no phones, no screens, no nothing. That's what you want in a meeting. You want people focused, not scrolling through Instagram. And I would even recommend like I know I'm a huge culprit of this but I'll put my phone on the table while we're having the meeting and I'm constantly just looking at it like a notification will pop up or something will happen. Then I'm distracted, I'm away from the meeting. Recommend, they all put it in their pockets or away or in their backpack or bag. Or a cheesy basket in the middle of the conference table. Get it at the end of the class. Whatever it takes. Whatever you want to do. So also with that, if people are using their laptops you might ask them to close their laptops or if they have to have their computers open, silence your messaging platform so you're not being pinged and you're not getting emergencies. Just shut it off, focus on the meeting that way you can save time, get the meeting done quicker, more efficient and get back to doing what you love. Yep. The less distractions the faster that meeting is going to go. If you like this video be sure to like this video and then comment down below. Let me know your favorite time saving hack for meetings whether it's been one that we talked about or one of your personal favorites that you use. Also be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you can be notified of all of our new videos. And with that, this is The Journey. We'll see you next time.