There needs to be a critical mass for the idea to take hold. You can’t just call a “no meeting day” when your team still has group meetings scheduled. The idea quickly breaks down if implemented at the individual level. That said, pushing meetings to Tuesdays/Thursdays is greatly appreciated. There is no hard mandate NOT to meet especially when there is something urgent. We now have no meeting days on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We started with one day a week, found the practice compelling, and moved to three days/week. In my experience, a 3-6 hour time slot is where the mind becomes truly engaged to deeply think and produce something original and of compelling value.Īt Launchable, we call the no meeting days Get Shit Done days ( inspired by Atlassian). Newport mentions that the smallest unit is a day. Here are some key tips on making no meeting days happen. Clear the calendar and hunker down to produce meaningful output. Bringing deep work into the office through Get Shit Done days It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time." – Cal NewportĬlearly, a jam-packed calendar schedule isn’t the answer. "Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. He makes the argument that to deliver at an elite level, you need deep work. No wonder they run ahead and capture it all. The closest example I came across in software (my world) is the “ State of DevOps” report that states elite teams can deploy software 208x more often than others. Newport mentions that one of the key abilities to thrive in the new economy is the ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers… the consumer will choose the very best.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work (pp. Specifically, the work of the economist Sherwin Rosen who is behind the theory of the “winner-take-all” markets: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance…There’s a premium to being the best. I came across the book Deep Work by Cal Newport a few years ago and a number of his arguments spoke to my challenges. Get Shit Done days are days where you don’t have any scheduled meetings. The answer is what I call Get Shit Done days. Zoom has made matters worse because you now hop out and into the next meeting without the mandatory 5min walk to the next meeting. A Google query on “too many meetings” returns 400M links. Seems like I am not alone with this problem. Anything that took a reasonable amount of thinking got done in weeks if not months. I had become a highly paid email and task traffic handler - routing tasks than doing them. “Quality” work delivered between meetings or after work, juggling email and slack responses while doing so. I sighed with resignation as I looked at my completely packed calendar.
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