Design-time Versus Meeting-time

Here's the pattern I've seen at a lot of companies:

  1. let's have a meeting!
  2. let's make it a regular meeting
  3. let's have more meetings
  4. let's make them regular too
  5. how come we don't get as much work done as we used to?
  6. let's have a strict agenda for each meeting and try to be brief
  7. let's have less meetings
  8. let's only have meetings that are strictly necessary, and call them ad hoc
  9. back to step 1

Whereas my own evolved preference is something like this:

  1. let's only have meetings that are strictly necessary, and call them ad hoc

A great way to deal with the different modes is to establish habits and routines around each of them. My friend is head of design at Salesforce and turned me on to the concept of "Me, Make, Meet":

http://managinguxteams.com/2010/03/27/me-make-meet-how-to-ma...

Tldr - use your calendar to carve out concrete "me time" to reflect, cave time at the beginning of the day to make stuff when your energy is highest, and set aside meetings and office hours for the end of the day.

TL;DR - designers and project teams need longer periods of unbroken time to get things done.

We're doing this now. Our biggest challenge is that we don't have a set start of day for anyone (some of our team have sleep disorders that cause their start of day to migrate over the week). Any advice for that case?

Move the meetings to the end of the day if you can. Most people have their most productive hours in the morning.