CHAPTER 6
The 50-Minute Meeting
by David Silverman
I have a life-changing proposal for businesspeople everywhere: 50-minute hours. Start a productivity revolution by scheduling business meetings that, by default, run 50 minutes long instead of 60.
How often do you find that by 11 a.m. you’re running late, and by 3 p.m. you’ve either been forced to dump a meeting to reset your day or are 100 e-mails behind because you’ve gone straight from one appointment to another all day long? Either way, you’re leaving someone (or many people) in the lurch. It’s a stressful and unsatisfying existence.
There’s another group of people who are scheduled in back-to-back sessions all day long, five days a week. I speak, of course, of students. All the way through school we’re taught in 50-minute blocks, a schedule that lets us get to our next class on time. The buildings even have bells to remind the person running the meeting—er, class—to end on time.
Why is it, then, that when we graduate, they take away our bells, replace them with an irritating “doink” sound signaling “15 minutes until your next meeting,” and assume we can now teleport to the next location? What could cause such madness? In two words: Microsoft Outlook. (Not without blame would also be IBM Notes, Google Calendar, Apple’s Calendar, and others.)
By default, Outlook sets up meetings that are 30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes long. There’s no room for travel time, to compose yourself, to answer a couple of e-mails, or for a coffee or bathroom break.
Next time you’re faced with scheduling a meeting, consider booking a 20-minute or 50-minute session. See what you can accomplish in that time, and if you can still get to your next meeting. You may just start a new trend in your organization.
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David Silverman has been an entrepreneur, an executive, and a business-writing teacher. He is the author of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars (Soft Skull Press, 2009).
Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on August 6, 2009.