With limited time and focus, you get to choose where to spend them.



These limits apply to many facets of life.  How do they apply to meetings in particular?

## Meeting Multitasking

We get choices to attend meetings every day.  We can be there for a long time.  The classic modern meeting hedge move is to bring your computer.  Our computer sits in front of us and is a window into a million other things.  

We give little focus to the meeting.  It'll happen.  We may not care how.  We'll get out eventually.  We really don't do anything well during these periods.  Why are we there?

## Meeting Intensity

We attend a meeting and bring great focus.  Our other issues can wait because we are here to contribute.  We question, share, think, and learn.  We do our best work.  This will not happen without care and focus.  We have cared enough to put down other things and spend our time and focus in this particular way for this period.

## Finite and Valuable 

Our focus is valuable.  Once we realize that it's not limitless, it becomes a resource to spend with care.  It feels good to give it to something of value.

When we feel that our focus is wasted is when we can feel frustrated.  We are invited to a meeting we aren't ready to fully participate in but we go anyway.  We feel compelled to be somewhere we're not excited about, never bring ourselves to share the vision of the meeting, and go anyway.  

And naturally, when we feel our focus and time is being wasted, we move to something else.  Often, we multitask.

## All In

When we commit we give our full focus and effort.  We are present, we will feel good about spending our precious resources, and the results will be satisfying.

If we aren't willing to fully engage, it may be best to fully disengage or postpone.  Why do it halfway and slight all your efforts at once with split focus?  We can drop those things, including meetings, that don't meet the standard of value we place on our own focus and time.

How do you make this choice?  How do you decide on the value of your own time and focus?

With limited time and focus, you get to choose where to spend them.

Limits Create Choices

Never miss a one-on-one.  It can send the wrong message.



## The Business of People

One-on-ones are personal interviews with people you lead.  It is a chance to communicate things that you each want the other to know.  It's an opportunity to connect with each other as people.  One-on-ones are about the business of people relationships.

## Scheduling and Rescheduling

Because you never want to miss one of these meetings, you need to schedule them at a cadence and a time of day that will work for both people.  Of course, there might be conflicts occassionally.  Reschedule when occassionaly needed -- never cancel.  If you make special effort to connect when it's specially hard to, you'll send a good message.

Putting these meetings first sends a message of putting your people first.  This is a time for you to focus on people you lead personally.  If you fill those time slots with something else, you are sending the clear message that something else is more important.  

How you spend your time sends a clear message about your priorities.

## Personal Interest

When you have an appointment to get together and talk to someone, you need to show some personal interest.  If, at the moment of a scheduled 1:1, you ask a question like, "Do you want to meet today?  I don't really have anything for us to talk about.", that can send a damaging message of lack of interest: I don't have anything to say to you.  I don't know what we'd talk about for 30 min in a room together.  Other things besides you are on my mind.  My focus is elsewhere.

When you miss a one-on-one, it's demoralizing.  People want others to care for them.  People want feedback on how they're doing.  People want to know that they're a priority.  

If there's any question about whether we should meet or not, it's a question about whether those things -- care, feedback, and priority -- still exist or not in the relationship between a leader and his people, and by extension the company.  

One of the worst moves, in my opinion, is putting the decision to cancel a 1:1 on the shoulders of the person you meet with in one-on-ones.  It's like stating your lack of interest and then not taking responsibility for it.

## Constant and Interested

So keep the 1:1s constant -- and not a boring, dutiful constant.  Show up to one-on-ones with your best self.  Be inquiring.  Be interested.  Show genuine support.  Don't let other things get in the way.

If you happen to be asked if you want to meet for one-on-ones, always give an enthusiastic "yes!"

How do you make sure one-on-ones remain a priority so you never miss one?

Never Miss a One-on-one

When you're in a meeting with other people, be with them, not with your laptop.



## Respect for Others

If you care about the person who's speaking in a meeting, you'll look at them.  You'll be with them.  You'll engage.  

If you have your laptop open in a meeting, you're communicating that something else is more important than the meeting.  You're communicating to others that observe your stance that the content, purpose, or outcome of that meeting is not as important as something else you've got going on privately on the screen of your computer.  It's super easy to be distracted by a screen in a meeting, and it's super important to give others the respect of your attention when in their presence.

## Laptops Integral to a Meeting

A meeting is not usually convened for the purpose of having you be on your laptop during it.  But sometimes meetings are working meetings.  Perhaps a spreadsheet is referenced.  Perhaps people are taking turns sharing their screen to a video conference screen.  There's a moment when using your laptop is required, so you have it handy.  Use it.  Be empowered by that tool to make the meeting better.  Then close it.

If you don't want to shut down you computer for some reason, like for keeping a video conference session open, close the lid most of the way in order to make it clear that your attention is on the meeting and the people in the meeting.

## I'm Bored

If you're bored, either try to fully engage or leave.  If the meeting doesn't need you, leave.  If there are too many people in the meeting for you to effectively participate, leave.  The more unengaged people there are in a meeting, the less helpful the meeting will be.  Be gracious, but get up and go.

## I'll Just Listen In

Sometimes we'll attend a meeting thinking we just want to hear what's going on.  We might -- _might_ -- hear something useful.  We don't expect it's very probable, but just in case, we'll attend that recurring meeting one more time.  

This is a losing bet.  If you can't fully engage, don't go.  If you just want to hear what's going on, it would be better to hear it over a video conference stream than to go sit in the middle of the meeting half zoned-out.  Make sure you turn off your video so people don't take cues from your non-interest as displayed on the big conference room screen.  

Multitasking doesn't work anyway.  You only end up doing two things less than or equal to half as well anyway.  Skip the meeting.  Ask a trusted attendee for the 5 minute highlight version.

Close your laptop and go to the meeting -- or don't.  Either choice is great.

Is this a challenge for you?  What am I saying?  The pull of the screen is a challenge for the Internet-connected human kind.  How are you going to decide whether to skip or engage in your next meeting?

When you're in a meeting with other people, be with them, not with your laptop.