This tip isn’t exactly life-changing but just seemed to me like a good application of common sense.

I work with a lot of junior engineers, and recently I decided it would be a good idea to have recurring one-on-ones with each of them. I thought Thursday would be a good day and monthly would be a good cadence. I would spread them out over the month so I could meet with a few people each week.

As I created the first meeting series, I wondered: should I meet with this person on the first Thursday of the month? The fourth Thursday? The last?

I realized that by fixing the schedule to calendar months, there would be either four or five weeks between each meeting. Four was probably okay, but five sounded like too many. I thought of a group I’m a part of that meets on the first Saturday of each month. If five weeks have passed since the last meeting, it seems like too long.

And it would cause problems with my schedule. If I always met with some people on the fourth Thursday and some on the last Thursday (whether the fourth or fifth), then on months with four Thursdays I’d have a day with twice as many one-on-ones. But if I chose never to meet with anyone on the fifth Thursday, then from time to time I’d have a week with no one-on-ones, which seemed like a waste.

In fact, there was no reason to couple these meetings to some decisions the Romans made 2,000 years ago about how many days each month should have. So I decided to meet with each coworker every four weeks instead.

There are some reasons you might not want to do that:

• If the purpose of your meeting is to talk about things that happened over a period of about a month, it’s easier to remember what that period is if it’s a calendar month, which implies that you should meet exactly once each calendar month.
• If your meeting is modeled more in people’s heads than in calendar software – like my group’s weekend get-together – then “the first Saturday of the month” beats “four weeks since the last meeting.”
• If you meet every two or three months, then an extra week or two between occurrences doesn’t make as much of a difference.

But if none of those cases apply, reduce the coupling between your monthly meetings and the vagaries of the calendar by meeting once every four (or five) weeks – whatever makes sense for you.