If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

– Albert Einstein

Meetings – we all love them! We love them even more when they’re over an hour long and nothing has been resolved – says no one ever.

Let’s be honest, a productive workday is not full of presentations that offer unmet goals. It should not involve hour-long, back-to-back meetings in an 8-hour workday. After just one long meeting, ones ability to focus becomes minimal and effective brainstorming is pretty much out the window.

So, how do we overcome it? Well, I’ve provided some suggestions that may be helpful in addressing meeting fatigue.

  1. 30 minute meetings…and that’s it! It’s better to have two short meetings than one long meeting. If we know a meeting is only 30 minutes then we go into the meeting much more focused and determined on what needs to be resolved.
  2. Prepare and send out an agenda at least 24-48 hours before the meeting with a task assigned to each meeting attendee. This allows people to consider the items on the agenda and they’ll come ready to deliver their part. Tasks can be checked off the list and more goals can be attained with proper preparation.
  3. Remove participants. If the people there truly can’t add anything valuable to the discussion then they probably shouldn’t be there – and they probably feel the same way too! It should be about quality over quantity. If you still want people to be in the loop about what occurred at the meeting, try having it recorded and send it out to those in the group who are not on the attendee list. This allows individuals to still be involved and they can share their questions/concerns with the group lead. 
  4. Address the issues before the achievements, that way you can spend more time in the meeting figuring out how to solve the problem whether than sweeping it under the rug until next time.

If you have other suggestions, please feel free to share them in the comment section!