Sometimes you’re just too busy to sit around in your office or home study and take video call after video call online. You might be busy with something work related that’s keeping you moving up and about, driving all over town, you might be busy with something else, like a day at the beach or theme park with your family, or a day filled with yard work and other activities. It happens. Sometimes, particularly if you work for yourself but also in other circumstances, there are a number of meetings you just can’t miss that are scheduled on your day off.
This article will act as a guide as to the best times to schedule up to five video chat meetings over the course of a work day where you may be busy outdoors. If you’re busy driving around running errands for work or otherwise then this probably means you’ll need to take video calls in your car. There’s some useful information about doing that, as well as other types of outdoor video calling, here. If you’re busy around the house you may need to simply step inside for each video call before stepping outside again. This goes without saying but if you’re busy with children outdoors, or individuals with a need for constant supervision, you should make sure another trusted and capable adult is watching them outdoors while you use your video conferencing software. Now let’s look at when to schedule those virtual meetings.
Or 9:30 am, maximum. The reason the start of the work day is a good time is because the 9 to 10 period of the day is a time when few people cannot do without you. If you’re busy outside because of work, your coworkers are probably clearing their desks, drinking their coffee and catching up on their emails from last night, boss included. If you’re spending a day by the riverside with your significant other, he or she can probably stand to take care of a few things that you’ll both need later in the day during that time slot. If you’re taking your kids to the park or prepping them for some splashing around in the pool outside, they’re probably still running around looking for their shoes or their floaties and so on, and so forth. 9:00-9:30 is time you can grab. 9:30-10:00 is also time you can grab but less so.
Like everything else, scheduling video calls efficiently is important for successive successful (yes I did that on purpose) video conferences. In point number 2 I advised reserving a half-hour slot on the assumption that you’re leading a particularly long meeting. But if you’re leading five video conferences a day, it’s safe to assume that three of them can be limited to 20 minute slots quite generously. Why 12 to 1? That’s a typical lunch hour, right? Well, kind of. 12 pm to 2 pm is roughly when most people opt to start their lunches, and the bulk of those people usually opt to start somewhere between 12:30 pm and 1:30 pm.
But these are urgent virtual meetings that you’re having under extraordinary circumstances. Anyone who was looking to start eating between 12 pm and 1 pm could push their lunch for twenty minutes easily. This means you have 3 twenty-minute slots for 1 hour, to hold three virtual meetings during, using video conferencing solutions. And 12 to 1 for you outdoors is the hottest hour of the day, particularly if you’re not holding these meetings on a very cold winter’s day. It’s time you and anyone involved in your day could very well use to take a break while you sit on a video call. Or three.
By the time 3:30 to 3:45 rolls around, you’ll be ready to do something different for another 15-30 minutes. You’ve had a good swim and a bite to eat or you’ve finished half your yard, you have time for another video call. For everyone else, there’s another perspective to consider. During the final hour of the work day, from 4 pm to 5 pm, a lot of people enter into “finish work mode”. They think of 4 pm as the step before 5 pm when they can finally go home. The last thing they want to do is cut into that time with a video call. So starting at 3:45 pm motivates everybody to be done within roughly 15 minutes. If the meeting does run any longer it will usually be because it was absolutely necessary. That way you can go back to your busy day that will likely end after 5 pm, while still experiencing a video call conducted in record time.
How do you feel about this guide to scheduling five video calls a day while you’re on the move? If you’d like to keep your video conferencing meetings even tighter, give one of Banty’s video chatting options a try.
