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Doodle your way to a meeting time

by Tris Hussey on May 31st, 2007

No I don’t mean drawing goofy things on a piece of paper. I mean using the site/service Doodle to help you plan a meeting:

So, lately, I’ve found myself informally assuming this role, driving a surprising number of gone-fallow projects just by using Doodle to propose a simple check-in. The bottom line is that this process of getting a stupid 15-minute call on the calendar of several busy people will tell you so more than you can imagine about where you and your project stand. But where’s Doodle enter in to it?

As I’ve mentioned before, Michael Näf’s web application is an extremely simple tool for fixing a seemingly simple problem: at what common time and date are multiple people available for a call or meeting? It accomplishes this by emailing participants and asking them to visit a web page where they can choose all their available times from any number of suggestions that the host has laid out. The results are tallied, the winning time emerges, and you’re ready to block the time on everyone’s calendars. Bob’s your uncle.

Merlin Mann of 43Folders explains that by setting a stake in the ground and using an external, objective bot to make scheduling decisions, the pressure is off you and you get to move things forward.

Getting a project that has fallen by the wayside back on track can be extremely hard and extremely stressful if your butt is on the line for getting it done. Having been in this position several times, sometimes I think you just have to lay down the law and get’er done. Sometimes you have to go to the person’s boss (maybe via your boss) and get their commitment. And if you can’t get key players to commit, then get the project off your docket until you can. Simplistic maybe, but you can’t have project hanging around your neck like an anchor when your job or performance review are on the line.

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POSTED IN: Cool tools, GTD, Project Management, Staying Sane, Time savers, Meeting magic, IE and Firefox

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