How to get the important stuff done between meetings
Datum: 2025-10-14 09:10
One risk of having as many meetings as lots of people testify to having now is that you do not have much time between them to do much else. If the meetings are “back to back”, you do not have time to do anything but step out of one and log into the next. And, even if there is a quarter or half an hour between meetings, it can be hard to get anything else done.
For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:
Is it really the most important thing?
Well, some things get done, of course, but not always the most important tasks, but rather the ones that are easily done — such as checking a few emails, catching up on chat messages, or sending something off quickly.
That leaves the more substantial and actually more important tasks left on the list. They will have to wait until the meetings are over, sometime in the late afternoon just before you finish work, or perhaps even later in the evening when everyone else has gone to bed.
Make progress anyway
Surely, you would rather get on with all the important stuff faster — even if you have more meetings than usual now? You would be more likely to do that if the important tasks were (or felt) as small and quick as the emails you are quickly reading and responding to between meetings.
Do this
If you want to get more done on your most important tasks during regular working hours even though your days are filled to the brim with meetings,
- Look through the important tasks on your to-do list. If you have marked them with an “Important” tag or category, they will be easy to find.
- If they are each so extensive that it is no use starting on one in a break between meetings, figure out what would be the first step you could take on the task. It does not matter if you were to define the step in almost ridiculous detail. A small step checked off is better than a big one left on the list.
- Create a new, small to-do task from each first step you defined and add them to the list. You can leave the original, larger tasks unmarked. If you do this once in a while there will eventually be so little left of the original tasks that you can easily rephrase them to represent the only thing left of the task.
- Next time you have a gap between meetings, choose one of the now much smaller important tasks from your to-do list instead of doing something short that comes to mind. Do it and rejoice that you used the meeting gap for a task that is important to you and which you now no longer have to do later when you would have preferred to be free.
More space for the meaningful
If you make sure that the important tasks are small enough that it is both possible and attractive to get them done when you have breaks between meetings, you will have less left to do when the actual working day is over. You will get on with what is important more quickly and you will be more likely to achieve what you want in your work.
How do you do it?
Do you have any other tricks for making the most of the short time between meetings? Please write to me and share your thoughts.
(Maybe you’ve planned a meeting-free day, but all those little tasks are still waiting to be done. Check out my tips for completing the small things in a few hours!)
You can get more!
If you want more tips on how to create good structure at work, there are many ways to get that from me - in podcasts, videos, books, talks and other formats.
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