Review

Guillaume Pousaz, founder and CEO at Checkout, a financial company valued $40B (as of May 2022) is known for his weekly ritual. Along with his assistant and chief of staff, they go through all the meetings he attended during the week. For every meeting, they ask themselves: “How important was it for Guillaume to be in this meeting?”.

For every meeting, they retroactively attach a score:

• “Require” means that Guillaume was absolutely needed to contribute to the decision making process
• “Notify” indicates that Guillaume did not contribute value to the decision itself (he was not required for the meeting to take place) but however needs to know what was decided
• “No” is used for meetings Guillaume should not have been invited to because not only was his presence not required, the meeting's topics and decisions where not important for him to be aware of

Whenever Guillaume receives an invitation to a meeting, the scores attributed to the organizer's previous meetings are checked. If too low, the meeting is declined straight away.

It obviously does not mean that such meetings will not be important but it forces the organizer to think long and hard before inviting everybody to a meeting. It also encourages the organizer to provide as much context as possible for the invitees to decide if the meeting is important for them to participate.

If you are in a large organization, this methodology works very well and you should follow it.

In any case, I advise you to apply a similar method and review your calendar on a weekly basis.

Take an hour or so to reflect on how well your time (events, meetings & tasks) was allocated based on your goals.

Even if it is hard to make it actionable, the simple fact that you realize that there is a misalignment between your goals and where your time is spent will help you take better decisions in the future.