Keep Your Appointments up to Date With This Appointment Timer
One of the easiest ways to disrupt a meeting is to start talking about something off-topic or spend too much time talking about something that you don’t have enough time to discuss something else. And let’s face it, no one likes to attend 20-minute meetings that usually turn into an hour-long adventure.
Earlier, I suggested appointing some kind of “policeman” for meetings so that meetings would not get lost. This person acts as someone separate from the meeting organizer and speaks when someone drags on their presentation or decides to bring up a topic that has nothing to do with the agenda. The only way that works; however if you have an agenda.
Scheduling an agenda is one of the most important things you can do when preparing for a meeting, but all this planning only works if you stick to that schedule. Timeblocks is a website that can help with this.
On the site, you enter each meeting topic, as well as the number of minutes devoted to discussing that topic, in order to create your own timer for a specific meeting.
When it’s time for an appointment, you simply hit the Start Timer button and the site counts down how much time you have left for each topic and prompts you to move on to the next one when your time runs out.
The interface is extremely simple and offers only play, skip and reset buttons. That way, if you finish something earlier than expected, you can move on to the next topic on the list and possibly end the meeting earlier (!). The actual site is clicking for some reason, so I recommend turning everything off.
If you are a small group, you can use the site as a personal tool. And if you’ve already implemented the idea of a “cop” in your meetings, it can make his or her job much easier.