Would shorter meetings make you more efficient?

In a recent update to its online Calendar service, Google has introduced an interesting new feature it calls "Speedy meetings".

 

The feature is very simple: when you set a meeting to run 30 minutes, Google Calendar will block out only 25 minutes. If you plan to meet for an hour, only 50 minutes of time will disappear from your calendar.

It is very easy to turn on Speedy meetings. Just go into Calendar Settings and find the "Default meeting length" option (another new feature, and a very welcome one as Google Calendar defaulted to hour-long meetings for years) then tick the Speedy meetings radio button if you want to give it a try.

We're not sure if Speedy meetings will actually make us more productive here at My Business - our meetings tend to run until they are done rather than finish just because our calendar says so.

What do you think? Will you be giving Speedy meetings a try or are there other ways you use that make meetings more productive?

Let us know in the Disqus field below.

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