[HN Gopher] If you want people to show up, data shows these are ...
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If you want people to show up, data shows these are the best
meeting times
Author : Coko
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-06-13 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.boomerangapp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.boomerangapp.com)
| thih9 wrote:
| > The best time to schedule a meeting is at 11am Monday morning.
| People want to get meetings done and off the calendar, and this
| time period has the least potential for conflicting with other
| meeting invites.
|
| > Avoid Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. These are the most
| popular times to offer, meaning the potential for conflicts is
| high.
|
| In case anyone else was interested in just their answer to the
| title question.
| pimpampum wrote:
| The title is not what it shows, that meetings are booked more
| on Monday 11am doesn't mean that people prefer or are more
| likely to show up. I guess they don't have data on attendance,
| only on booking.
| abstrakraft wrote:
| I was confused by that terminology at first, too, but it
| appears their product has an "offer" phase where the meeting
| organizer suggests multiple times, and a "book" phase in
| which the invitees accept the meeting and it's booked. Which
| doesn't necessarily mean that the meeting is attended, but it
| is a higher level of confirmation/buy-in from the invitees
| than what happens at my work (FANG) where organizers just
| throw meetings on everyone's calendar.
| throwaway2016a wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| The Wednesday one rings true. I always have an absurd number of
| conflicts on Wednesday.
| catamount2020 wrote:
| > But the data shows that offering only one or two proposed
| times, even if they're "good" ones, isn't the best way to get a
| meeting scheduled.
|
| Definitely counterintuitive, the strength of the effect (2.4x
| acceptance rate for 3+ options) was eye opening.
| heyheyhey wrote:
| One thing I love is Outlook's function of starting meetings at
| :05 or :10: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/end-
| meetings-earl...
|
| That quick break has made a huge difference.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| If you want people to show up, cancel the 70-80-90% of your
| meetings that are completely unnecessary.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| I schedule meetings at 830am on Mondays because I am a monster.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| I prefer this over 11am. I want a good 3 - 4 hour block to get
| focused work done. If I have a meeting at 11, and I need time
| to prep, it means I have 1.5 hours tops to get stuff done.
|
| As much as I have afternoon meetings, either first thing in the
| morning, or after lunch is best. Gives enough time to get stuck
| into things without disruptions.
| [deleted]
| fzeindl wrote:
| And if you want Meetings to be effective 1. Give out a short
| bullet point agenda for every meeting and 2. Take a break every
| 45 minutes.
| lnsru wrote:
| 45 minutes is already long meeting... From my experience longer
| than 30 minutes group meetings were never productive.
| ghaff wrote:
| Sometimes you need a workshop. Sometimes you need an hour
| meeting. But one of the beneficial effects of the pandemic I
| experienced is that there's now a lot more push for meetings to
| be 30 minutes by default--at least in my experience.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 2. Take a break every 45 minutes.
|
| Breaks are good when you're having half-day or all-day
| meetings. For example, when someone has travelled to the office
| and you're meeting all day.
|
| For regular meetings with your normal office mates, if they're
| so long that you need to insert breaks then they should
| probably have been separate meetings.
|
| Having everyone leave the meeting and then slowly meander back
| in always takes longer than it should. That 5 minute break can
| turn into 10, 15, or even 20 minutes as you try to track down
| the last person who wandered off and then got pulled into
| something else.
|
| Just make the meetings concise enough to handle without a
| break. If you have more material, schedule a separate meeting
| for it.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Take a break every 45 minutes.
|
| Perhaps things are different at the top of the tower, but in my
| experience if your meetings are regularly longer than an hour
| I'd say you're doing it wrong, or you're holding a workshop and
| not a meeting.
|
| Get the right people in the room, have a clear agenda and
| someone to lead the meeting if needed, and it's rare that more
| than an hour is needed. Often far less. At least in my world.
| My most productive meetings are around 15-20 minutes.
|
| If you're holding a workshop then I agree, take breaks.
| Coko wrote:
| New blog: Our team at Boomerang (https://boomerangapp.com/)
| analyzed 3.5 million proposed meeting times, putting the
| conventional wisdom about the best ways to schedule meetings to
| the test. The results are surprising, and busted some common
| myths about the best days and times to schedule meetings.
| 88913527 wrote:
| I am unsurprised that earlier-in-week have more accept's than
| later-in-week. Weekends are a reset.
| ghaff wrote:
| And at least my experience is that Fridays have become a no
| meeting zone except in exceptional circumstances for a lot of
| people.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Interesting article, but very clickbaity. Here's the gist:
|
| > The best time to schedule a meeting is at 11am Monday
| morning... this time period has the least potential for
| conflicting with other meeting invites.
|
| > Avoid Wednesday and Thursday afternoons... the potential for
| conflicts is high.
|
| > Providing three meeting slots will suffice. [The article
| actually says seven, but only because it's content marketing
| for an app that lets you offer seven slots]
|
| > Time of invite matters. Adding a last-minute event to
| someone's calendar probably won't be well-received
| yosamino wrote:
| curious: that website mentions seven patents. I couldn't find
| it on the website, what patent are these ?
| deepsun wrote:
| It's also culturally dependent -- I noticed US-based employees
| prefer to schedule a meeting for an idea and discuss/think/make
| decision on the meeting.
|
| EU and even more so Asia-based employees prefer to first discuss
| the idea on multiple 1:1s for a long time, to discuss / think /
| make decision with everyone, come up with some harmony before any
| formal meetings. And the meeting itself would serve only
| ceremonial needs -- to let the manager officially declare the
| idea live.
|
| That creates cultural clashes, when some people schedule a
| meeting to discuss something, but others decline or don't
| understand why are they here.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| As a European-American dual-national this rings so true. I work
| in a tiny European tech company and it drives me crazy how
| challenging it can sometimes be to actually get people in the
| room simply speaking their mind on any subject. It's a cultural
| difference that I think really holds back the pace of
| innovation.
| Solvency wrote:
| I always hear conflicting stories like this. On one hand,
| people claim Americans are often too artificially faux
| positive, too effusive, too <insert anything but the cold
| hard authentic truth>. And that you'll have no problem
| hearing from Scandinavians / Eastern Europeans / <insert
| here> exactly how they feel. Often to the surprise of many
| Americans, who are not used to such candid direct
| communication.
|
| Obviously life isn't so black and white but I am wondering
| where these generalizations come from.
| deepsun wrote:
| I immigrated to US, and I'd say Americans are direct. They
| just try hard to make the words very polite. So polite,
| that Europeans take that for positiveness or indirectness.
| But it's just politeness.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > They just try hard to make the words very polite. So
| polite, that Europeans take that for positiveness or
| indirectness.
|
| interesting, any good examples?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| "I would recommend/suggest/consider changing this code to
| this."
|
| Read: Fix your shit. Or give me a good reason to not
| block your PR until hell freezes over and we all need ice
| skates.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Being blunt is different from being truthful. We Eastern
| Europeans are so truthful that we end up not saying
| anything at all for fear of being too blunt. So what you
| get is all these 1:1's where everyone has to make sure that
| everyone else is on exactly the same page before being open
| about it in a larger meeting. No space for disagreement or
| discussion in a larger forum!
|
| I can't speak about other Europeans or their culture, but
| here in Eastern Europe we historically had very little
| education in presentation, debate skills and critical
| thinking. So people have strong opinions, but little skill
| in presenting or confronting them with other perspectives
| and ideas. Of course, it never is all black and white. But
| this is my own experience with tech millennials at least.
|
| Americans (at their best) are in some ways the opposite -
| they're good at diplomatically navigating a variety of
| imperfect voices to arrive at a mutual agreed upon point of
| view. Coming with that (idealized) American mindset into
| Eastern Europe isn't easy.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I belonged to a small non-profit (part of a much larger
| international body). We had regularly-scheduled general
| meetings every month. These meetings were supposed to last
| under one hour and they were supposed to have a set agenda.
| Nevertheless, our leadership would frequently neglect to set
| the agenda, and so any issue could be raised by anyone at any
| time during the meeting, making for absolute anarchy. Now on
| top of that, none of us properly understood Robert's Rules or
| Parliamentary procedure, so every issue raised would just
| result in endless controversy and back-and-forth debating with
| little resolution.
|
| When I became the leader, I was informed that we also needed to
| hold "Officers' Meetings" every month, just prior to the
| general meeting. The purpose of the Officers Meetings was to
| come to rough agreements on big issues, before they were put to
| a vote, and also to set the agenda for the upcoming General
| Meeting. With a set agenda on paper, we were much less likely
| to deviate from the action items listed therein.
|
| Unfortunately for me, it proved impossible to schedule
| Officers' Meetings, because of facilities considerations and
| nearly nonexistent turnout. I held some at my own home and one
| person would attend. It was wholly ineffective for the intended
| purpose.
|
| We also had trouble splitting off into Committees. If a
| significant event was planned, such as a breakfast, then it was
| logical to form a committee and then have them form up and
| communicate. This committee should be in touch via email/phone
| of course, but also hold planning meetings where details of the
| event could be hammered out. Unfortunately, due to low
| participation, these Committees never did their own thing, and
| instead were folded into the General Meetings, wasting
| everyone's time discussing things like bacon and napkin counts.
|
| I really tried. I tried to stick to the prescribed structure of
| the meetings; I tried to set an agenda and stick to it; I tried
| to redirect endless debate and discussion into more productive
| action. But as a first-time leader, I found out just how
| limited my power really was, and the sacrifices we make as
| servants, when the organization is dysfunctional and we're just
| trying to stay together as an informal family unit.
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > EU and even more so Asia-based employees prefer to first
| discuss the idea on multiple 1:1s for a long time, to discuss /
| think / make decision with everyone, come up with some harmony
| before any formal meetings. And the meeting itself would serve
| only ceremonial needs -- to let the manager officially declare
| the idea live.
|
| This is so that the manager doesn't lose face in front of his
| subordinates. In the US, if the junior employee has a stroke of
| genius during the meeting and comes up with a better idea than
| the manager, then the manager just looks good for hiring that
| guy.
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(page generated 2023-06-13 23:02 UTC)