Brilliant discovery

[darkemeralds]

• IF you're stuck in an annoying and irrelevancy-filled two-hour meeting with Norm, and
• IF you sit at the far end of the conference table, and
• IF you have a smartphone, and
• IF you have either wifi or a data plan you don't mind using, and
• IF you're near retirement and really don't give a damn that you don't look very engaged in the subject of the meeting

THEN you can accomplish a remarkable amount of research on your novel rewrite.

Comments

[hunningham]

Yes. I used to get a lot of work done in meetings. Mostly pen and paper work (this was a long time ago) but same principle.

[darkemeralds]

Meetings are the world's biggest waste of time. Okay, after the internet.

[hunningham]

Meetings can work. But they need a purpose (agenda?), and someone who is prepared to be forceful and keep things on track and cut people off (chairman?), and decisions have to made and written down so everyone knows who should be doing what and then someone has to follow-up and make sure that whoever has done whatever, and if they haven't then there must be public shaming in front of the library. So often none of this is done, and the main goal seems to be get many people in a room and bore them rigid.

I have many strong feelings about meetings.

[darkemeralds]

I agree with every point. Even when I've run meetings to those standards, the public shaming part is such a huge amount of work (because of course it has to be done without making enemies in this echo chamber of an environment) that it's invariably the weak link.

But the sad fact is, I don't run all the meetings I attend. And way too many people around here run them as ego-trips to see how much firepower they can get into a room to waste an hour. Herding cats is one of several aspects of my job that I won't miss.

[darkemeralds]

One of my favorite posts (if I do say so myself), on the subject of meetings.