Meetings are killing your vibe
There, I said what you were all thinking. Meetings are the worst! I don’t just hate them because they are boring though, or because I have to listen to people talking for an hour. Let’s start with a quote that will make you laugh every time someone suggests “having a meeting about it”:
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
- Dave Barry
Never a truer word was said. Before you say “Harley! Meetings are an important function of any organisation, how dare you!” let me make a few distinctions when meetings are appropriate:
- Making deals — for obvious reasons
- Purposeful workshops — sinking your teeth into a hairy problem collaboratively
- One-on-one employee reviews — it’s important to be one on one as humans
- Coffee meetings — because meeting people and coffee are both awesome things
- Stand-ups — it’s important everybody knows what’s going on and whether anyone needs help. These can be avoided too though (see final pro-tip).
There’s no doubt about it: these types of meetings are absolutely essential. Collaboration happens when we are together. It’s essential that we talk through these things when we are solving problems, negotiating or relating as humans.
You might also like: Networking tips from someone who hates networking
There’s a huge number of meetings set that are wasting your time and my time. Meetings are a productivity killer. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Meetings are killing your vibe!
How to identify a useless meeting
There are a few red-flags that I have noticed over the years that make me promptly reply ‘no’ to a meeting invite. Sometimes people are crafty and can pull you in off mere intrigue. But it’s your job to cut through the crap and really evaluate whether it’s worth your time.
No agenda has been set. The meeting tsar should always have an agenda and include it in the invite. This allows everybody attending to evaluate whether their input is really necessary, or whether it’s a waste of time.
They want to ‘discuss some feedback’. No. Just no. The world has produced beautiful tools such as Invision, Bugherd and XX (to name a few) that have allowed us to bypass feedback meetings. We had a client recently who used Invision to leave feedback (Yay!) but then wanted to have an hour-long meeting going through each comment left. So unnecessary!
Someone can definitely fill in for you, i.e. it’s not necessary for you and someone else on your team to both go. Let someone else take it for the team and get them to summarise the meeting for you.
How to avoid useless meetings
It’s important to weigh up how much impact you attending the meeting will actually have in order to free your life from the mundane. Don’t go to one if you feel like the meeting is just going to waste your time.
Check where you fit into the agenda. If you’re not mission critical, then you’re not going.
Just decline the invite. You’d be surprised how effective this is!
Ask someone to summarise it for you. Since they aren’t as keyed into the reality of pointless meeting as you are, they will be happy to oblige.
Ask whether this can be done through another tool, like my Invision example above. If it can, it’s probably wasting your time.
Discuss it over slack. Put aside 10 minutes to discuss the issue over Slack if you get the feeling it can be handled in a short conversation. This has the added benefit of being able to tune out or mute when your attention is no longer required.
If all else fails, set a ruthless time limit. If people have an hour for a meeting, they will take an hour. If you only allow for 20 minutes, I guarantee you’ll be able to keep the content in the meeting within 20 minutes. People will feel like they are wasting your time if it goes over — which is exactly what they are doing.
Final pro-tip: skip stand-ups in favour of #status
This is for the hardcore meeting-cutters out there. Instead of doing a daily stand-up — that will either disturb someone’s work time or delay them getting into the zone — just do a status update on slack. Have some structure around it like a stand-up does: What you worked on yesterday, what you worked on today and what you need help with. This is especially handy for remote teams: it keeps everyone in the loop and everyone focussed.
Go forth and be free of the tyranny of meetings!
Originally published at Mayte.
