You check the time and realize that you have 4 minutes before your next meeting. Maybe it’s an internal meeting, maybe clients are coming in. Is it in person or online? Depending on how you answer those questions, time to start scrambling so that you are where you need to be and have the information required to make this meeting a good use of your time. But guess what? I promise that you will end up waiting on someone … maybe you are that someone. Either way, you aren’t getting that time back and you haven’t even started yet. Welcome to EP 148: Meetings are a Waste of Time [Note: If you are reading this via email, click here to access the on-site audio player] [hoops name="top1"] I wrote a post on this topic 11 years ago – and it was also titled “Meetings are a Waste of time.” When I wrote this down as a topic, it wasn’t because I had already covered this topic a decade ago, it was because I had forgotten that I had covered it and I most likely had just come out of a meeting that I felt was an unproductive waste of time. Is this going to be a crabby podcast episode? It’s entirely possible, but you can hit the pause button, go grab a beer, and then restart the show because I feel like most people feel like I do when it comes to the majority of meetings they attend. I am becoming more and more sensitive to sitting in meetings where I think: What am I doing in this meeting? You already said that, move on … What does that have to do with what we are supposed to be talking about? I went back to reread that post from 2013 and as I went through the points, I typically thought to myself “Nailed It” but things are a little different for me now and shockingly, I thought I was in a lot of meetings before, I am in ten times that number now. It’s not even close! A couple of caveats to consider: There is a huge difference between professional environment meetings and volunteer organization meetings, Meetings with Clients, and internal meetings. Along with those distinctions comes a slightly different pain threshold for what is acceptable behavior or not. While I would like volunteer meetings to be run with the same efficiency, I have to acknowledge that these are "volunteer" based meetings and if the people attending have to do something as part of their real jobs, I am not going to get in their way. Probably 50% of the time I spend in meetings isn’t scheduled. My office (air quotes) is pretty open and it lends itself to pop-in meetings – which was purposeful at the time of design. Exactly what is supposed to happen DOES in fact happen, but it does become disruptive to developing any sort of rhythm to the creative process. Client meetings generally fall outside of the requirements I considered, unless I am the one who is slowing things down – which does happen. I wrote in the 2013 post the following: “At least half of the meetings I attend, nothing is really happening other than the swapping of stories. One on hand, that’s okay because I’m the Pecos Bill of stories, but I simply don’t have the time for it anymore.” So in an effort to reclaim some lost time, here are some tips I have collected and follow to help make sure that my days don’t get longer by sitting in unnecessary or gratuitous meetings. Start your meetings on time jump to 17:39 If someone is late, that’s their problem. Don’t review information that’s already been covered. I make it an effort to be on time to meetings and it drives me insane when someone else is late and I have to just sit there waiting on them. Not only a waste of time, it’s disrespectful – it says “my time is more important than yours”. I wrote "For the Love of All That is Holy ... Be on Time" and it sums up my opinion on the matter rather succinctly. Set the meeting length to an hour and end the meeting on time. jump to 20:19 Unfortunately, some meetings always seem to take longer than an hour but I’ve found that when I walk into a meeting and tell people they have an hour before I have to leave I am always amazed that we can almost always get everything done in that hour. End meetings early. jump to 29:16 People seem to respond more favorably to attending meetings when they actually end sooner than they are scheduled. I know that when I have resigned myself to sitting in an hour long meeting with the structural engineer and it ends early?! I’d better go buy a lottery ticket because it must be my lucky day. Limit the number of participants in a meeting to a few people as possible. jump to 32:18 In the case of meetings, the “more” is definitely not the “merrier”. Whenever you get a large group of people in a meeting, there will be items covered that do not pertain to everyone in the room … and that’s when things turn like a pork sandwich left out in the sun. Next thing you know, there are multiple meetings taking place and you’ve lost control. If this is your meeting, keep things on point. jump to 36:02 This is the one rule that can make you come across like an a-hole if you’re not careful.
