From the course: Time Management Tips

How to schedule a meeting

From the course: Time Management Tips

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How to schedule a meeting

- In many positions, you often have to schedule a meeting with someone else, however, the back and forth of you and the other person trying to figure out a time to meet can become a headache and a distraction, let's talk about a few things to help scheduling meetings go a bit smoother. First, try to schedule quick meetings. Google Calendar has a built-in feature for this called Speedy Meetings, this automatically schedules rather than an hour meeting, a 50 minute meeting, leaving 10 minutes of buffer space at the end, or rather than a half an hour meeting, a 25 minute meeting, whether or not you're using Google Calendar, I recommend you make speedy meetings a common practice when scheduling appointments with other people, it will help you be more relaxed, help give you transition time for the next meeting, and help you both be more focused during the time that you meet together. Next, if you share a workplace with this person, try to set things up so that you can see each other's schedule, most calendars let you set things up so that the person doesn't see the specifics of your appointments, just if you are busy, this way you can maintain some privacy, but still allow other people to see your availability, as a side note, I don't recommend that other people have the ability to schedule appointments for you unless they are a dedicated assistant, rather, I prefer that people see what you have available and then suggest times, with you doing the final scheduling, this helps avoid a lot of frustration and confusion, next, whenever scheduling, provide multiple time options, usually two to three, so rather than saying, can you meet next Friday at 10:00 a.m, offer something like, I'm available on Friday at 10:00 a.m, or Monday at 2:00 p.m, or Monday at 3:00 p.m, this makes it easier for people to find an option that works for them, also, if you know that you're going to meet with this person on a regular, recurring basis, try to find a time that works in both of your schedules at least 80% of the time, what this means is that, if you have an appointment every other week, not every single one of those appointments has to work perfectly, but if you find a time slot that works most of the time, it creates a starting point in both of your schedules, then, whenever a conflict comes up, you move the appointment to a different time within that week, which allows you to keep the meeting and be flexible, but also have a schedule that you can both count on, one final note, if you're trying to schedule a meeting with many people across different organizations, not in your company, you may find it helpful to use a third-party app, for one-off situations, you might want to take a look at the apps such as Doodle or MeetOMatic, which provide a quick and easy way for people to vote on all the times that they have available so that the organizer can find common ground, when you make an appointment with someone else, keep it, remember the time and the trouble that you went through in order to create that meeting, by keeping your appointments as scheduled, you'll reduce distractions and inefficiencies in your week.

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