How to be productive during boring meetings?
14 comments
Here is my solution for boring meetings, charge money for them. It usually won't be money that gets funneled into your private pocket, it will be added to a team war-chest for fun-days, extra training and offsite activities.
The reason that so many useless meetings exist is that no one has to float the bill. The second some suit in a different department needs to justify the expenses of calling too many people to too many non-productive meetings they diminish drastically.
The reason that so many useless meetings exist is that no one has to float the bill. The second some suit in a different department needs to justify the expenses of calling too many people to too many non-productive meetings they diminish drastically.
"Meetings are not always about the efficient exchange of information..."
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/01...
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/01...
It doesn't really matter what the purpose of the meeting is, it costs the organization money in lost time & productivity, so someone needs to be billed for it.
You want a display of power, great - float the damn bill for your show.
You want a display of power, great - float the damn bill for your show.
Maybe you should do what you're supposed to do (be bored and unhappy) so it'll force you to examine the circumstances that led you to be in boring meetings frequently enough that you post something on the Internet asking about what to do about it.
I've become a much better sketch artist because of boring meetings over the years. I also spend the time going over the design of whatever system I'm currently working on, reading articles I've printed out, dreaming up cute domains to buy, and thinking about my own projects. Generally I'm pretty forceful when it comes to avoiding useless meetings though. I'll frequently skip them even when repeatedly prodded.
Tap while you are bored and keep count of how long each daydream lasts using your tapping!?! That sounds even more boring than the boring meeting! Doodling is waaay better!
Don't go to boring meetings. If people complain, they'll have a reason -- something you might have missed. Make the meeting about that which you missed, and you're fine. If you can't change the meeting to accommodate, chances are the meeting is too big in scope. Refactor.
Here is one strategy from pp. 51-2 of Csikzentmihalyi's book on Flow: "Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, the famous German experimental physicist ... provides an intriguing example of how one can take control of a boring situation and turn it into a mildly enjoyable one. ... To alleviate [the burden of sitting through boring conferences] he invented a private activity that provides just enough challenges for him not to be completely bored during a dull lecture, but is so automated that it leaves enough attention free so that if something interesting is being said, it will register in his awareness. ... Whenever a speaker begins to get tedious, he starts to tap [his fingers in a regular pattern] ... there are 888 combinations one can move through without repeating the same pattern... Professor Maier-Leibnitz found an interesting use for it: as a way of measuring the length of trains of thought...Suppose a thought ... occurs in his consciousness while he is tapping during a boring lecture. He immediately shifts attention to his fingers, and registers the fact that he is at the 300th tap of the second series; then in the same split second he returns to the train of thought. [When the train of thought is complete, he calculates how far the series of tapping progressed while he was thinking.]"