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Stacking meetings is helpful until it is harmful. How do you balance that, out of curiosity?

by ska 7y ago

zerzar 7y ago
we define focus time as 3+ hours of uninterrupted time chunks. If you already have less than 3 hours of free time during the day, we prefer to give you a break than to further stack meetings together.
- ska 7y ago
  I cans see how that helps with protecting some focus time but not with meetings themselves For example there are lots of situations where 4 1 hour meetings in a row is just a bad idea even though it could be done to protect a 3 hour block. Problem being knowing which situations those are depends on both the type of meeting and your role in it. I guess the problem is splitting your day into "focus time" and "meeting time" will work well for some roles, but is overly simplified for others. Not obvious how to solve that, most of the simple approaches would involve significant user input.
- zerzar 7y ago
  Ah I see, do you mean in case you need to do some prep/post-meeting work for a meeting and if its sandwiched, there is no time to do it? I can see that being a problem as well, we are adding functionality to cycle through suggested times to avoid that situation if the default time we suggest causes issues like so
  - ska 7y ago
    It's both pre/post work, and focus. Some meetings need more mental focus than others, so stacking them can in fact can cause the same sort of problem you are trying to avoid with other work (i.e. "focus time"). cycling through sounds like a decent approach.
- nogabebop23 7y ago
  How do you handle the fact that not everyone needs big blocks of uninterupted time (example: IT vs Developers) or that all employee-hours are not equal?
  - zerzar 7y ago
    For our paid product, we allow the company to set priority based on roles (mostly for executives) and also to tune the algorithm to work differently (prioritizing meeting space utilization vs. individual focus time)

Stacking meetings is helpful until it is harmful. How do you balance that, out of curiosity?

by ska 7y ago

Stacking meetings is helpful until it is harmful. How do you balance that, out of curiosity?

we define focus time as 3+ hours of uninterrupted time chunks. If you already have less than 3 hours of free time during the day, we prefer to give you a break than to further stack meetings together.

ska 7y ago
I cans see how that helps with protecting some focus time but not with meetings themselves For example there are lots of situations where 4 1 hour meetings in a row is just a bad idea even though it could be done to protect a 3 hour block. Problem being knowing which situations those are depends on both the type of meeting and your role in it. I guess the problem is splitting your day into "focus time" and "meeting time" will work well for some roles, but is overly simplified for others. Not obvious how to solve that, most of the simple approaches would involve significant user input.
zerzar 7y ago
Ah I see, do you mean in case you need to do some prep/post-meeting work for a meeting and if its sandwiched, there is no time to do it? I can see that being a problem as well, we are adding functionality to cycle through suggested times to avoid that situation if the default time we suggest causes issues like so
- ska 7y ago
  It's both pre/post work, and focus. Some meetings need more mental focus than others, so stacking them can in fact can cause the same sort of problem you are trying to avoid with other work (i.e. "focus time"). cycling through sounds like a decent approach.
nogabebop23 7y ago
How do you handle the fact that not everyone needs big blocks of uninterupted time (example: IT vs Developers) or that all employee-hours are not equal?
- zerzar 7y ago
  For our paid product, we allow the company to set priority based on roles (mostly for executives) and also to tune the algorithm to work differently (prioritizing meeting space utilization vs. individual focus time)