With the latest update now available on the Apple AppStore, MeeTime meeting timer adds the ability to calculate the costs of your meeting.

Combining a meeting cost calculator into a meeting timer app allows you to see the estimated cost of the meeting both as you are planning the meeting and while you are running it.

To find out why you should be using a timer for your meetings at all, read this first.

If you have never worked out the cost of your meetings before then we think you might be shocked at the amount even a simple meeting costs. For a very quick glance, try the free one at HBR.

We costed a recent conference call for the whole sales force of a large corporation at £7.5k.

It really puts into perspective the value of time you can save by finishing early. This particular meeting finished early and saved over £1k worth of time.

To set up the meeting cost calculator in MeeTime, you need to have a pro version of the app, either by purchasing the app previously or by signing up for a pro subscription (a two week free trial is available on all plans at the time of writing).

If you have a pro version, the meeting costs section in the setting should automatically switch to “on.”

In settings, you can click on edit to change the default average salaries by grade for your organisation.

If you have no idea then you can leave them as they are. The dollar amount is just to denote currency amount rather than the actual currency, you do not need to convert your salaries into dollars if you are using the app in other currencies unless you want to.

Remember to include fully costed salaries for this part so you can really understand what the value is the organisation rather than the individual's. A rough rule of thumb is to double the amount of gross salary that you estimate each grade to get paid. This allows for employers pension/401k contributions, national insurance / health care and any other benefits that the company might provide for their employees.

Once you have done the set up, or left the default settings, the next time you add a meeting and get to the agenda entry screen, you will see an option at the top to add costs to the meeting. This is the meeting cost calculator part.

You will have already, or will next, add the timings to the meeting. The costs per grade are already set as they are unlikely to change very frequently. So all you need to do now is add the number of attendees from each grade that you think will be coming to the meeting.

If you are running a meeting with guest speakers coming in and out revolving around a core group, then we advise to simply enter the average amount of people in the room for the whole duration to make the costs calculate most accurately.

The time in the circle in the top right will show the cost of the meeting if you have already entered the agenda. If not, when you go back to add the agenda timing the text in the circle will cycle in between showing the duration of the meeting and the cost of the meeting.

Once you are done, just hit save like normal, add the meeting to your calendar if needed and wait until 15mins before the meeting start time to get a notification pop up from MeeTime and get set to have a great meeting!

The benefit of having the meeting cost calculator within the meeting timer is that you can see costs in real time during the meeting (above). This really focuses the mind when you can see the costs increasing each second, especially in with a large meeting agenda.

Again, for a quick glance for free to see how much your costs trickle upwards, use this free web app.

For more sophisticated meeting tracking, ​see the MeeTime app in action below:

Find out more at www.meetimeapps.com or download from the AppStore now

With the next Apple event scheduled for 12th September, iOS12 will be upon us shortly.

If you have not seen the developer preview or the public beta, iOS12 contains a great feature for your meetings...

The Do Not Disturb feature can now be set just until the end of an event in your calendar.  It will be easier than ever to instruct your attendees to turn on do not disturb to remove distractions from your meeting.

If you have any other tips for removing devices from meetings, leave them in the comments below.

Are you tired of those useless, never-ending meetings? Have you had a terrible meeting today?  You are not alone, but there is a better way.

Employees are wasting up to 2 years of their lives sitting in useless meetings and no wonder as three-quarters of people have never received any formal training on how to conduct a meeting.

Meetings are currently facing a renewed backlash with some high-profile companies sharing their loath for them. Elon Musk recently sent an email to Tesla employees telling them to just walk out of bad meetings and that excessive meetings were the blight of big companies.

His advice is to keep them short and infrequent. But in a world where it is ever easier to schedule meetings, how can we keep productive in the ones that are necessary?

It is interesting to see people when they are in an internal corporate meeting.  Everyone hates them, yet most are just resigned to the fact that they have to be there.  It seems like no one is linking the fact that if they take control and leave this meeting early, they can get home to their kids, go to the gym, work on their side hustle or, in fact, anything that they complain they do not have time for.

Perhaps this is why companies are now moving towards timing their meetings. Samsung recently said that they are trying to save wasted time by incorporating meeting timers as a push towards a 'work smart' culture.

Google has long used a time timer as to make the time in meetings "visible and tangible, so it changes the way people think about time passing."

Apart from just using a clock, which timer should you be using? The main decision boils down to whether you want to use software or hardware.

There are a few different timing solutions available from Amazon, with the Time Timer being the most simple and visual.

The trouble with all the timers above is that they do not help you during the meeting.  The advice to 'start on time, stay on time, stick to the agenda and end on time' is always in the top 5 ways to make meetings better, but as Yogi Berra says, "in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

Staying on time is easier said than done.  Especially if you are the one running the meeting, trying to keep time and taking notes.  When things inevitably go awry, it can be an impossible mental arithmetic task to work out how to get back on track.

MeeTime was an app designed specifically for timing meetings. MeeTime will start when the meeting is supposed to start. If you are behind, guess what?  You're behind. However, MeeTime will help keep you on track with beautiful visuals showing how much time is left and who is on point for each section of the meeting. Plus, it is easier than ever to finish a meeting on time with MeeTime.  Should things not go to plan, the "Auto time remaining" setting automatically apportions over/under-runs across the remainder of the agenda.

Absolutely.  Don't just take it from me, read these testimonials:

"This is a great, great idea and it has massive potential.  I truly believe that this has got great potential to help a large number of people!" ~ Chris Bateman, Global Senior Manager, World Class Supply Chain, Molson Coors Europe.

"I think the visual aesthetics alone make it far easier to keep pace during a meeting instead of watching a clock. Great start for a new app!" ~ Carlye King, Project Manager, Revenue Management & Optimization, Nielsen.

"This is an awesome idea! I love this," said Richmond Nash, Productivity Coach.  "It is indispensable to have an app that breaks down the agenda of a meeting by each point and the time frame for each! I'm in a lot of meetings and this is going to be a go to app!!"

"Does exactly what it says on the tin.  The interface during the meeting itself is easy to understand and has all the info that you need.  I liked the congratulations summary, I could see how much time I'd saved for myself and others and it's allowed me to talk of the benefits of meeting with me - we always achieve our objectives within the time allocated!" ~ Paul Rowe, Commercial Enterprise PMO Business Partner, Molson Coors International.

MeeTime is already being used by employees in big organisations including Goldman Sachs, Rolls Royce, Nielsen, Hewlett Packard, DXC and Molson Coors, among others.  It can work for your organisation too and for less than a cup of coffee you don't need to save much time to get a return on your investment.  Why not give it a try?

Download now or find out more

To find out how MeeTime can help calculate the cost of your meetings, read this now.

Our video from the Keep Productive YouTube channel:

We also sponsored their apps of. the month video which you can see here

This is ingrained in us from an early age but is not innate. Even the best hunting machines in the animal kingdom by far fail more than they win. Lion versus gazelle, nine times out of ten the gazelle will get away.  The lion has adapted to have enough energy from one meal to be able to keep failing. We must do the same.

What do you have the energy to fail at?

Probably not something that you do not care about - an exam in a subject you hate, a job interview just to pay the bills. But what about something that you are passionate about? Music? You must fail a lot to learn an instrument and keep practising anyway. Sport? You are not going to win the World Cup without ever losing.

But school and some companies gear us up to fear failure. Which ironically is the surest way to ensure failure - it is just that it will be later on.

The fear that one exam will ruin your whole life will show itself again throughout your life. You are afraid to speak up in that meeting. You are afraid to change jobs even though you hate it. You are afraid to do something that you are passionate about.

What is stopping you?

Only the constraints that society has put on you. Surround yourself with other information. Surround yourself with positivity instead of fear and realise that failing is moving forwards. Keep trying anyway. Keep the passion. Embrace the gift of something not working out, take the lessons from it and try something else.

What is the alternative? To be paralysed into inaction your whole life? Do something.

Why is hip-hop is so inspiring? Because they created something out of nothing. Sure, every artist does this, but it seems like hip-hop had more adversity than others. I watched the defiant ones on Netflix recently and it is so motivating. I am sure lots of people will take from it that they were lucky, but serendipity does not happen when you are at home on your couch doing nothing. Here is what I took from it:

Always work towards the bigger picture.  Jimmy Iovine would not have a career if he had not gone to the studio on a holiday and met Bruce Springsteen. And Jimmy wanted to quit being an engineer on Born to Run because he was tired of asshole artists. His boss told him to look at the bigger picture. Your job is not to get paid for 9-5, your job is to help the artists make the best album they can make and if you do that, you will have a friend for life. Which brings me on to...

Relationships, relationships, relationships. Everything is built on relationships. Everything. Every opportunity and every risk. And they are best cultivated in person. And if not in person, then on the phone. Phone someone every day and keep that relationship hot. Whenever they signed someone tricky to get, it was because a relationship went sour and the artist wanted out. They got the artist because they worked on building and maintaining the relationship.

To scale, produce the producers. Jimmy realised that he could not get across all the artists he wanted to, so he had to get other producers rather than do all the work himself. This is not managing the managers, this is leading the leaders - and everyone can be a leader.

Get great people and let them do what they do. Do not try to control or manage the fall-out of great people. Just put the blinkers on them, set them down the course and let them ride. You got them for their good bits, do not try to manage their bad bits. That is part of who they are, and you will interfere with their creativity and passion if you do.

I found this so interesting and I for one have got a habit I want to try - phone every day. What are you going to try from this list? Let me know in the comments.

You can get a lot done with a small group of great people. You feel like you can change the world, and sometimes you can. Having just one person that is negative, that does not "play with the other children nicely," that just slows things down unnecessarily can destroy this.

Having the right team around you makes all the difference. Equally, having too many people, irrespective of their ability has the same effect. Things become slow, arguments get circular, discussions turn to consensus and things get taken out and "decided" one to one in different forums.

Two easy things to check next time you feel like this:
- Have we got the right people on this?
- Is this the minimum we can manage with or can we take more people out?

In the second of this weekend's link posts, an excerpt from an article by Ron Gibori on the common mistake that keeps businesses at a standstill.  The excerpt below resonated this week due to writing a post about Jimmy Iovine to be posted soon.

Remove your ego and make the best decision for your company.

The simple truth is that networking and investment are priceless and necessary for any entrepreneur. Whether or not it means giving away equity, having consignments for your idea from influential thought leaders is crucial. A page in a local publication or being highlighted on a high-traffic site because you know the editor is a quick route to growth and success.

As much as you spend time working on and refining your idea, don't forget to nurture the relationships of the people around you. Nobody climbs to the top by themselves, somebody had to build the ladder.

Read the whole article here

The first of this weekend's link posts is from Ryan Holiday with 7 stoic strategies for navigating the workplace.  Our favourite is below, but read them all here.

On tough days we might say, "My work is overwhelming," or "My boss is really frustrating." If only we could understand that this is impossible. Someone can’t frustrate you, work can’t overwhelm you — these are external objects, and they have no access to your mind. Those emotions you feel, as real as they are, come from the inside, not the outside.

The Stoics use the word hypolepsis, which means "taking up" - of perceptions, thoughts, and judgments by our mind. What we assume, what we willingly generate in our mind, that’s on us. We can’t blame other people for making us feel stressed or frustrated any more than we can blame them for our jealousy. The cause is within us. They're just the target.

Read the whole article here

This has to come above all else. Just like looking after yourself first because you cannot help anyone else if you do not have your health. As long as your focus is on how to help others, then looking after yourself first is okay. If you have a tendency to be selfish, then you may need different advice. But if you are the sort of person that always puts others before yourself, you may be burning yourself out to the point that you can no longer help them.

It is okay to take some time for yourself. You need to unwind, decompress, de-stress. There is no point putting others first if you are angry, irritable and frustrated. Sort yourself out so that you are in the right frame for your interactions. Otherwise, you are not really helping - you are there in body but not in mind - just going through the motions because you have to.

A quick cheat code for getting some time for yourself? Get up before everyone else. No need to lose sleep, go to bed earlier. Getting up earlier is the easiest way to be more productive. Workout, meditate, journal. Whatever it is you need to do to get back to yourself, early morning is the easiest time to do it before the day descends into chaos and whim.