Exercise: Module 5, Lesson 3 - The Meeting & Deep Work Audit

Objective: To apply the principles of effective collaboration by auditing your own work habits and designing a specific, actionable intervention to reduce unproductive meetings and increase time for deep work.

Your Task

This exercise is a practical audit of your own work or school life. You will analyze your past week and propose a change based on the concepts from the lecture.

1. Audit Your Week: Look back at your calendar for the past week. Create a simple tally:

   • How many hours did you spend in scheduled meetings (or classes)?
   • How many hours did you have in blocks of 2 hours or more for uninterrupted "deep work"?

2. Identify a Target for Improvement: Identify one recurring meeting from your week that you believe is either:

   • Completely unnecessary.
   • Highly inefficient or unproductive.

3. Propose a Solution: Based on the principles from the lecture, write a specific, actionable proposal to either eliminate or radically improve this meeting. Your proposal must incorporate at least two of the following concepts:

   • The principles of effective meetings from Steven Rogelberg (e.g., clear agenda, right attendees, active facilitation).
   • A shift from synchronous to asynchronous communication.
   • The use of an AI meeting assistant or other workflow automation tool.

Deliverable

Write a short (300-500 word) proposal in a Markdown file. Structure your proposal with the following headings:

• Weekly Audit Summary:
  • Hours in Meetings: [Number]
  • Hours in Deep Work: [Number]
• Inefficient Meeting Identified: [Name of the recurring meeting]
• Problem Diagnosis: [Briefly explain why this meeting is inefficient or unnecessary]
• Proposed Solution: [Your detailed, actionable proposal for fixing or eliminating the meeting]

Example Submission Snippet:

Weekly Audit Summary:

• Hours in Meetings: 14
• Hours in Deep Work: 5

Inefficient Meeting Identified: The Weekly "Project Status Update" Meeting

Problem Diagnosis:

This is a one-hour meeting where each of the 8 team members gives a 5-minute verbal update on their work. Most of the information is not relevant to everyone in the meeting, and people are often distracted. There is no clear agenda other than "give updates," and it rarely results in any decisions being made.

Proposed Solution:

My proposal is to eliminate this synchronous meeting entirely and replace it with a structured, asynchronous process enabled by AI.

1. Asynchronous Updates: Every Monday morning, each team member will write a short, standardized status update in a shared document, outlining their progress, priorities, and any blockers. This replaces the verbal report-out.
2. AI-Powered Summaries: We will use an AI tool to automatically read all the individual updates and generate a concise, high-level summary for team leads and stakeholders. This saves leadership time while keeping them informed.
3. "Office Hours" for Blockers: If a team member has a blocker that requires discussion, they can attend a new, optional 30-minute "Office Hours" session on Tuesday. This ensures that synchronous time is reserved only for active problem-solving, not for passive status reports. This new process frees up 8 hours of collective team time per week and makes the information more accessible and searchable.