by John J. Walters

I was surprised to discover recently that a Google search for the best time to schedule a meeting came up with only one helpful post suggesting a productive time and the rest of the hits were mostly just how-to posts from the various meeting organizer programs out there with nothing to offer on when people are most alert.  So I set out to fix that.

What is the best time to schedule a meeting?  When are people ready to be productive?  I stumbled across a BBC News article about a “simple formula for staying awake” (you do want people to stay awake during your meetings, right?) that I thought might give me some indication of the time most people are alert, but it lacked a real explanation of how to apply the formula.  Apparently the key to staying awake is — you guessed it — getting enough sleep.  In fact, the British Sleep Society has concluded that, “If people are tired during the day then they are not getting enough sleep.”  Shocker.

Another study suggests that the time that people, on average, are most alert is early evening (between 6 and 7 pm).  This is because humans used to spend their evening time “securing the hearth for a safe night’s sleep.”  I’m never one to discredit evolutionary conditioning, but it would seem to me that the evening is a less-than-optimal time to schedule a meeting, as most people have already gone home for the day by then.  The study’s second choice, dawn, is an even less likely time to find your coworkers at the office — unless you’re a farmer, perhaps.

The American Time Use Survey provides an excellent (and interactive) way to look at how most Americans spend each day.  If the graph is to be believed, the most likely time to find your co-workers at the office is between 9 am and 3 pm, so logically the best time to schedule a work meeting is somewhere between these hours (although when attempting to schedule a non-work meeting you should clearly look at other times, such as the early evening).

If you schedule the meeting well enough in advance and do all the necessary prep-work (preparation is very important) then you’re already “semi-there.”  People generally have no problem arranging their schedules around a meeting that they know is important and will be relevant to their work.  But what about when you don’t have enough time to schedule something a week in advance?

I guess you could always take the WikiAnswers route and shoot for 2 pm on a Wednesday, as this is a nice midpoint in the week after people have returned from lunch and before they’re checking out for the day.  Or you could let your attendees do some deciding and make use of a helpful program that allows you to propose times and take a vote of when everyone invited will be available — like MeetingCaptain.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under Hints and Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.