Schedule automatic breaks between meetings
A crucial prerequisite of being productive is taking regular breaks. And while it may sound counterintuitive, research shows it’s true.
Hence, scheduling meetings one after another is a mistake that can and will cost you productivity and efficiency. While you often cannot impact the length of meetings you’re asked to participate in, you can influence the length of meetings you’re hosting. And this Calendar hack can help you.
Open the Settings section and then select Calendar. Now you have to click on Events and invitations, and the necessary configurations will appear.
As you access the section, you can now set up your Outlook Calendar to automatically start meetings late or end them early. I’ll go for ending meetings early and show you an example of how it’s done.
In the Events and invitations configuration window, you’ll see the phrase Shorten duration for all events and a checkbox next to it. As you tick the box, more settings will appear.
Now, I want to set an early ending to all my meetings. I select End events early at the first dropdown (there’s also an option to choose Start events late). Then at the second dropdown, I select that I want to end meetings 5 minutes early if their duration is less than one hour.
And I decided to schedule an automatic 10-minute break or end meetings 10 minutes early if they last one hour or longer. I do that at the following dropdown.
Then I hit the Save button in the bottom right corner of the window, and my new take-a-break rule is all set.