This 5-minute schedule change does wonders for stress

Amy Shearn
Forge
Published in
Sent as a

Newsletter

1 min readFeb 4, 2021

📆 Today’s tip: Start meetings at 5 after, to give everyone a minute to breathe.

In a recent Zoom meeting here at Medium, Adrienne Samuels Gibbs, deputy editor at ZORA, casually mentioned a potentially life-changing schedule hack: start meetings at an odd time, like five minutes after the hour. In the remote-work era, it’s easy to wind up with a stacked calendar in which one meeting ends at 2:00 and the next begins at 2:00 and even though you’re just on your computer at your kitchen table, being in two meetings at the same time remains impossible. Give your colleagues a minute or five to use the bathroom, stretch their legs, look out a window, and reset.

🖥️ More Forge stories on making meetings less stressful:

How To Make Meetings Suck Less
Read more >>

Ask This Question Before Calling a Meeting
Read more >>

How To Run a Good 1:1 Meeting
Read more >>

The Forge Daily Tip is sent every morning via email. ☀️ Subscribe to the Forge Daily Tip here.

You’re subscribed to receive emails from Forge. You can adjust your settings via the link at the bottom of this email.

--

--

Amy Shearn
Forge

Formerly: Editor of Creators Hub, Human Parts // Ongoingly: Novelist, Essayist, Person