Matt Paulson caps his meetings at 10 per week to protect productivity and work-life balance. He's already cut volunteer boards, blocked evenings and weekends, and hired an assistant. He built a tool to track calendar limits and wants feedback on whether the cap should change.
Questions this video answers
No more than 10 meetings per week during the month of June.
More than 20 meetings in a given week.
Two volunteer boards at a time.
He does not do meetings on evenings and weekends.
He recently hired an executive assistant.
Chapters
Hey, guys. Matt Paulson here. In this video, I want to discuss a new strategy that I've implemented in my personal life relating to what meetings I'm willing to take and how many meetings I'm willing to take in a given week. I've got a lot of meetings because of the different things I'm involved in. You know, I serve on a few volunteer boards, the Ziegle Center, Sioux Falls Seminary, 1,000,000 cups. I'm also involved in a few different businesses. I'm involved in my church. I'm working on a local political campaign right now. You know, a lot of people just ask me for a coffee to get advice for their business, which I'm happy to do most times. And I've just got a lot of stuff going on, personally and professionally, but it just adds up to be a lot of meetings. But I do enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to be actively engaged in one's community and then try to do some good in the world. While I enjoy everything I'm involved with, it does place a lot of different meetings on my calendar. And sometimes I just don't know when to say my calendar is full for the week. I just can't take any more meetings right now. There have been a couple of weeks when I've had more than 20 meetings on my calendar in a given week. And realistically, that's just more than I can handle. I'm kind of a social introvert. I love spending time around people, but it can be draining to me. So taking on too many meetings at once becomes a distraction, and it becomes tiring to me. So it becomes a distraction from MarketBeat and kind of stops me from getting as much done as I'd like in my business. This is something I've written about before, and it is something I've struggled with for a while. I've tried a few different things and I tried to put some good boundaries in place, but haven't really yet been able to find a good way to maintain the right balance. I've realized for a while there's going to be more good things to be involved with than I realistically have time to do. For this reason, I've kind of decided I'm only going to be on two volunteer boards at a time just because I'd rather make a big organization on a couple or a big impact at a couple of organizations and make a minimal impact on many different organizations. So I've had to tell several non profits saying, sorry, I can't be on your board right now I'm on too many as it is. And I've also decided that I'm not doing meetings on evenings and weekends because that time is reserved for my wife, my kids and our church activities. So I just don't do meetings then and really have endeavor. I've also recently hired an executive assistant to kind of help manage some of the chaos. That's my professional life and that's been helpful to free up some time as well. But even with these self imposed restrictions and having my EA kind of marine help with things, you know, the workday does end up more meetings than I would like on my calendar. So this summer I'm going to try something new, kind of protect my time to make sure that my energy is going to the places that are most impactful for my life and my business and my community. So I'm putting a hard cap on the number of meetings I'm going to take each week and that will kind of help protect my time for my business and my family. So initially I'm going to try to do no more than 10 meetings a week during the month of June and I may adjust that number up or down in July kind of how based on how that's going. So I've effectively given myself a budget for the number of meetings I can schedule in a week and that will kind of prevent me from overextending myself during the workday. So now when someone asks me for a meeting, I have to ask myself, do I really need to take this meeting or is this one of the 10 most important meetings that I can take this week? And then if the answer is no, then I won't take the meeting or I'll schedule it for the following week. So if my calendar is getting booked up two to three weeks in advance, so be it. One thing that I did that not anybody else can do was I wrote a little tool in my code that will or code base that will scan my calendar and tell me how many meetings I have in the next seven days. So I'll kind of know at any given time how close I am to my hard meeting cap. And this will probably actually necessarily mean that I'm going to have to tell people that I won't meet with them or I can't meet with them this week. And honestly, this is going to be kind of hard for me because I tend to be somewhat of an accommodating person and I'm kind of a people pleaser and I just like to help people who need advice for their business. I also like to stay in the know on things, so I'll go to meetings for nonprofits that I'm involved with, even some of the meetings that I don't necessarily need to be at. And you know, I'm involved in things like downtown Rotary and various chamber events, and I do like to go to those things. So me saying no to these things is really where the rubber will hit the road with this project. But that's probably what needs to happen to protect, you know, what's really important in my life. You know, my time with my family and my work with Mark Beat and certainly my commitment to my church as well. You know, I don't know if I'll stick with putting a hard cap on meetings after this kind of experimental period of June, July and August. There are some other ways I could limit the number of meetings I take in a week. I could make a conscious decision to be involved in fewer things. One piece of advice that my business coach Michael gave me was to give people some homework to do before I meet with them for coffee, such as telling them to read a specific book first and then tell them to follow up with me after they've read that book. I could also limit meetings to a specific time frame during the day, which I may do anyway because it really throws off my productivity when I start my day with a meeting. So if I have an 8am meeting, it's already 10am and then when it's done, my email is full and I haven't got anything done for that day. So I might try to not have any meetings until 10. Could do that. Just some ideas for things I might try in the future. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this experiment. This idea of setting a hard cap on the number of meetings one takes in a week. You know, it's not a perfect solution to protect my time, but I do think it's an idea worth experimenting. But I'd love to hear your feedback, so feel free to put any ideas or suggestions you might have in the comments below. Thanks for watching.
