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Forgot the pre-meeting dip of preparing for meeting or being in waiting-mode.
Yup, that “what can I start in 10min” question really ruins a lot of productivity.
Yeah also true, you’re generally not gonna start doing anything if you know you’re getting interrupted anyways.
Don’t forget the loss of productivity in the hours before the meeting, spent worrying about it.
Yup, and getting older makes it harder to catch up to that damn train of thoughts after that useless ass meeting interrupted them.
Some meetings dip into negative productivity.
100%. I try to keep working through them and only participate when my name is called.
I often skip meetings without agenda. If they don’t care to prepare a reasonable invitation, I don’t care to join. Also - I skip meetings where they announce stuff. Announcements should go to my inbox, so I can read them when ready, not when they think it’s suitable for them.
Agree!
indeed
In my previous job, I was asked to break focus every 15 minutes to check my email and see if one of my coworkers was falling behind on dealing with a queue of tasks, then pitch in if he was. I hated the job in general, but that in particular just ruined any possibility of productivity. Hard for anyone, near impossible for someone with ADHD. Then I got blamed for falling behind on my work. And for being disorganized (we didn’t have a ticket tracker, hmmm).
Let’s have 5 of these on a row during the most productive hours of the day between 8 and 12. Then have lunch were we share hilarious anecdotes and after that we feel too bleh to do our job. We will just sit around the office and talk more bull shit and then go home. Too bad we told Mrs x we will do y, who cares?
Sounds perfect doesn’t it.
Meetings are part of the productive time.
Oh, my sweet Summer child…
I’m serious. Politics are a good chunk of the job, meetings is a major place for that. What happens there can have dramatic effects on how long something takes and therefore on the “produced output per unit of time.” I’ve been at it for 13 years now and embracing that has had positive results on my well-being and career. 🥹
We make a lot of sausage in meetings. Brainstorm ideas and figure out what the challenges will be. Having all five or six people there at once is much more efficient than taking back the forth to each one individually.
There are status update meetings, but those are so other people know what you’re doing so if it effects them they can work with it.
If that’s true, consider yourself very lucky :)
True. Will say that a previous workplace of mine had too many unproductive meetings, current one manages to find the balance where meetings are actually productive!
We do this to ourselves first thing every day even though it’s been shown in studies that the start of the day is when you’re at your most productive.
I am definitely not at my most productive at the start of the day.
Same. I’ve found I’m most productive from like 3-7 pm, which sucks. I’d like to be productive in the morning or in the early afternoon instead of mostly past regular work hours.
Fix your sleep. I am tired of people like this. I have a Forrest Gump like colleague who calls me at 9pm asking me about a meeting we had at 9am (he was there and said yes to everything)
What? Your colleague sounds like they may be struggling with some serious cognitive issues, they may want to see a doctor about that. As for me, I’ve been living with my brain my entire life, and have kept several different sleep schedules in that time, for one reason or another, including rigid adherence to a schedule you would certainly approve of, and at no time has the basic fact that my brain works better later in the day ever changed. Some people never learn that their own circumstances and experience are not universal. Maybe try not to be one of those people.
I find it great when we have a meeting every other half hour. I get a lot done on those days.
