How I Dramatically Reduced the Number of Meetings I Take Each Week

Hey, guys, Matt Paulson here. This is a follow up video to a video I made over the summer that suggested that maybe you should try to set a hard cap on the number of meetings that you put on your calendar each week just so that you can focus on the things that are most important to you and hopefully maintain a more balanced life. In recent years, my personal challenge has been really discerning. Which organizations do I want to be involved with? What nonprofit boards do I want to serve on? What businesses do I want to be part of? What individuals do I want to mentor? What investments do I want to make? Just really what do I want to be involved in? What makes the cut, what doesn't? I like to stay busy. I'm not one that can sit around and watch TV for three hours. I just don't do that. I like to do a lot of different things, but that's really put me in a place where there are just too many meetings on my calendar. There would be weeks last year when there were as many as 20 different meetings on my calendar for people that wanted to meet with me, have coffee, get business advice, nonprofit board meetings to attend, biz dev, phone calls for MarketBeat, networking events, mixers, stuff like that. There were literally weeks when I had 20 meetings on my calendar and it was too much. It became just too unmanageable when something needed to change. So over the summer I kind of decided to do an experiment and then I put a hard cap. The number of meetings that I'd be willing to take in a week. I set it at 10. So I take no more than 10 meetings a week. And if someone wanted to meet with me after my limit of 10, I would just tell them no or have them schedule for the following week. It worked pretty well. I actually modified the calendar software that I use to flash a big red warning light. So if there are more than 10 meetings on my calendar in that Monday through Friday kind of period, it would show a big nice red warning sign saying, hey, you've got too many meetings. Slow it down. But that way I always kind of knew what my commitment level looked like over the next week and whether or not I was getting out of balance. So that was really helpful. I won't lie and say that every week I haven't gone over the 10 median limit. Sometimes I'll have last minute things that come up saying, hey, can you meet for 20 minutes to talk about this this afternoon? Yeah, sometimes that happens. But it really hasn't gone over more than say 12 or 13 meetings in a week. And I think that just being aware of what I already have on my calendar has made it so that when I do, I'm getting ready to put something else in my calendar. I have to ask myself, you know, I've already got eight meetings on a calendar this week. Do I really want to put a ninth meeting on my calendar? And that's caused me to say no more often, which for me is not that easy of a thing to do. I realized recently that sometimes I'll tell people that I meet with them even though I didn't really want to, just because I couldn't think of a good reason to tell them no. So I kind of always thought, you know, I need to. If I'm not willing to do something, I need to give people a reason why. And I figured out that, you know, you don't really have to give a reason for your no's, though. So sometimes I'll just tell people that I can't be with them, or I'm not interested in meeting with them, or I'm too busy to meet with them and you know, the meeting's not going to happen. And the reality is you just don't owe everyone that wants something from you in an explanation. So sometimes just a no is good enough. I always try to be polite and communicate back to people. Say no. If I've got a good reason, I'll say no with a why. But sometimes just a no is okay. I've also been a little bit less proactive about scheduling meetings and following up with people. So if someone tells me that, hey, we should have lunch or coffee and catch up, and I actually want to have lunch or coffee with them, I'll tell them to send me an email with a few times and dates that work for them. Sometimes they follow up and I'll schedule the coffee or the lunch, and sometimes they won't follow up. And that means that maybe it wasn't that important for us to meet in the first place, that's okay. Not every meeting needs to happen. I've also been able to reduce some of the number of meetings that I've been taking every week by just delegating some meetings to members of my team and people I know. Like yesterday or today, before I recorded this video, somebody from a local media outlet asked me if I could do an interview for Startup event that I'm doing. And I can't do the interview because I've got a meeting then. But instead of just canceling a meeting, I found someone else who's a startup leader. In our community to do the interview and said so the interviewer still gets to happen. People are still saying nice things about startups who follows and Zeel and follows Angel Fund. But I didn't have to do the interview. Somebody else did it for me. On the MarketBeat side, Will has kind of taken a lead on biz dev business development. So if somebody wants to do a deal with MarketBeat, will first vet the deal, see what they want and get on the phone with them before I have to get on the phone with them. So that will screen out 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 4 business development phone calls that I have to take. Maureen is also taking the lead on a lot of the startups who follow stuff that I'm doing specifically in person events. So we recently did an event called September Startup Social. Great turnout, had more than 100 people there. But she arranged the catering. She found a beer and wine distributor, lined up all the speakers and booked the location. And that's probably 10 different meetings and phone calls that she handled that I didn't have to. And I felt great about it overall since kind of putting the meeting cap, that's kind of a rule for me to follow. I do feel like I've got a lot more balance in my life. I don't feel like I'm missing out on stuff by reducing the number of meetings I'm taking each week because most of the stuff I say no to is stuff that was of marginal interest to begin with. And a lot of other meetings don't happen without my presence. But I also feel good about those because the work gets done and I just don't have to be a part of it. Delegating meetings has really been a freeing and empowering thing where possible. And I really think that the 10 meeting a week rule is going to be the new normal for me along with the other strategies that I've mentioned in this video. But it's been really nice because if I'm not taking meetings during the day, it means I can actually work during the day. That means I'm not working as much at night. That means I can spend more time with my kids at night, can spend more time in a hot tub or hanging out on a deck, reading a book, watching tv, doing things online. So it's been a really good change for me personally. I think that's about it for this video. Hope you enjoyed watching. Hope you enjoyed this follow up. Hopefully I'll do another one of these next week. Thank you.