Monthly Meetings: Saving Time

The first and most obvious benefit to having a once-a-month meeting is the amount of time that you save. This networking model gives you some additional eighty-plus hours in your schedule every year. You are able to carve out more time in your life and in your business for the things that are most important without sacrificing the value of being part of an organized group of people who are all supporting each other’s business growth.

Even the few hours you save every week make a big impact on your day. A recent study suggests that losing as little as thirty minutes of sleep can increase your insulin resistance, which raises your risk of diabetes and obesity. There are studies that have tracked the correlation between having to set the clocks back in the spring (i.e. losing an hour of sleep) and higher incidents of car accidents. In his article Sleep Habits: More Important Than You Think, clinical psychologist Michael Breus, a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, says that reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as ninety minutes for just one night can reduce your daytime alertness by as much as 32 percent. This cuts your work productivity by almost a third! Multiply that effect by four weeks, and you’re potentially losing over a day’s worth of productivity every month. How much is it costing you to wake up a couple of hours earlier once a week, in addition to the loss of your beauty sleep? (And let’s face it—some of us need that more than others.)