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Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

meetanotherday.com

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Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#31

Post by danieltillett »

bunderbunder wrote: post #7

I picked up the habit of doing this manually a couple years ago, when my meeting load mushroomed following a reorg. I also started getting assertive about declining meetings if I thought they were asking for too much time. Too many folks were in the habit of reflexively blocking out a full hour for a decision that could be made in 15 minutes plus a briefing email that everyone could be expected to read ahead of time.…

I loathe meetings like everyone else (nothing like being an academic to help develop a hatred of meetings and committees).

I have often thought that it would be great to limit the amount of meetings any person could organise on a monthly basis via some quota (say 6 hours a month). Everyone who wanted to organise a meeting over some trivia would then be forced to think twice - do I really need a meeting for this?

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#33

Post by restlessmedia »

sulam wrote: post #8

I do this all the time manually, but it's not hard or time-consuming. Why would I want this service trying to do it? It takes me maybe 5 minutes to block out the portions of my week that I don't want people to schedule over. (Of course, they still schedule over it. But they also schedule over real meetings, so I don't think there's some magical way to name a meeting that makes it seem important enough that the meetin…

I thought exactly the same, I've always blocked out my lunch (recurring) for the gym which is trivial to set-up. The rest can be ad-hoc depending on how much of my time I need to put off limits.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#34

Post by eru »

danieltillett wrote: post #31
bunderbunder wrote: post #7

I picked up the habit of doing this manually a couple years ago, when my meeting load mushroomed following a reorg. I also started getting assertive about declining meetings if I thought they were asking for too much time. Too many folks were in the habit of reflexively blocking out a full hour for a decision that could be made in 15 minutes plus a briefing email that everyone could be expected to read ahead of time.…

I loathe meetings like everyone else (nothing like being an academic to help develop a hatred of meetings and committees). I have often thought that it would be great to limit the amount of meetings any person could organise on a monthly basis via some quota (say 6 hours a month). Everyone who wanted to organise a meeting over some trivia would then be forced to think twice - do I really need a meeting for this?

Make people bid for your limited meeting time!

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#36

Post by eru »

jabagonuts wrote: post #19
jldugger wrote: post #10

How toxic is the work place that you can't block out time for Actually Working on your calendar?

Sadly, working on your calendar is non-capitalizable, so you are frowned upon for doing it on company time.

I think jldugger means you block out time on your calendar for `Actually Working'.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#37

Post by eru »

mturmon wrote: post #29
deepfriedtech wrote: post #21

I loathe meetings and do my best to avoid attending them unless there is a specific technical issue being discussed that falls within my wheelhouse. I especially dislike meetings with non-technical people present. To have to stop the meeting constantly to explain things is annoying, so I ask to be excused unless my area of expertise is involved. A later walk-to-the-local-cafe-for-espresso with my supervisor gives me…

I get where you're coming from, but as you probably know, one must be careful not to take it too far. Metaphorically, one of these days, the server room you're shut up in might be outsourced to the cloud, and you weren't at the meeting. More concretely, by saying "no" to these meetings, a person is advertising that there are some standard capabilities that they don't have (e.g., "not skilled at working with non-techn…

Decline most meetings, not all.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#38

Post by cat-dev-null »

bunderbunder wrote: post #7

I picked up the habit of doing this manually a couple years ago, when my meeting load mushroomed following a reorg. I also started getting assertive about declining meetings if I thought they were asking for too much time. Too many folks were in the habit of reflexively blocking out a full hour for a decision that could be made in 15 minutes plus a briefing email that everyone could be expected to read ahead of time.…

People that want to pontificate, seem promotable and do less real work love by inviting everyone, every hour/day/week/month with standing meetings, while said folks trying to do more real work should take time out to hear themselves blather on abstractly about work someone else may be (maybe you) get voluntold into doing.

No agenda... not attending. Not reasonably necessary... not attending.

Sounds d!ckish/selfish, but survival skills in large orgs require some gambits.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#39

Post by RealityVoid »

bane wrote: post #18
jldugger wrote: post #10

How toxic is the work place that you can't block out time for Actually Working on your calendar?

It gets pretty crazy when you move into middle/upper management and your day gets consumed by meetings with teams waiting for you to make a decisive decision about some minor point of conflict. It gets worse the more people end up under your hierarchy and delegation becomes a major priority. But then your life is consumed by synchronization meetings so you know what your delegates have been doing on your behalf and c…

So you become a human kernel: scheduling, handling resources, resolving conflicts, starting processes, synchronizing.
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