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Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

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Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#41

Post by danieltillett »

eru wrote: post #34
danieltillett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Great idea. Now someone just needs to turn this into a product.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#42

Post by rdl »

mxuribe wrote: post #26
rdl wrote: post #11

I do this and also take advantage of the chance to take a conference room for an hour or two, vs. open plan desk with my back to a room full of people. I get probably 5x more done per minute in the conference room.

During a previous job when I had a more manageable workload, I actually enjoyed the open plan desk. The interaction with my peers, co-workers etc. was actually helpful - if not always for productivity - at least for ideas, general sanity checks, etc. And then i got my current job, and the workload is just crazy...so any tiny interruption kills my productivity...So i do similar to what you do: block some time in a con…

I think the trick is either to work from multiple locations (based on task), or to have a reconfigurable space.

In my next office, I am going to do a team-based pod system. Teams of 4-8. Single large room to start (2k SF or so), broken up however they decide (could be one huge room, or individual offices, or some combination, or smaller offices plus one big room, etc)

The thing I really want to try is offices with openable walls on 2-3 sides. One side opening into a shared team room; the other opening into a hallway or open plan space.

(The other trick is doing this somewhere with <$24/mo per SF real estate.)

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#43

Post by rperce »

cat-dev-null wrote: post #38
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, b…

Do you know, you're allowed to swear on the Internet? It's okay, I promise.

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#44

Post by rperce »

cat-dev-null wrote: post #38
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, b…

Do you know you're allowed to swear on the Internet? It's okay, I promise

Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings

#45

Post by AstroJetson »

lostcolony wrote: post #23

I have a recurring "Developer meeting", with some of the other devs every day at 12-1 because I was so tired of having the management types, having filled the rest of their calendars with useless meetings, deciding to schedule me for useless meetings that prevented me from getting lunch (as in, Monday, Tuesday is wide open, then Tuesday morning, bam, meeting invites from 10:30 until 2:30, no breaks). That, and respon…

People where I work try to book meetings across lunch on a regular basis. I'll get the invite and ask "are you bringing food?" No food and I'm not showing up.

I did have one smart person slide a pack of crackers across the table at me. As I ate them I was declining every meeting with them for the next month. That solved that problem.

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