Meeting Freak

I hate meetings. They put a spotlight on all my weaknesses and obscure all of my strengths. They require sitting, listening, teamwork and patience. These are skills and qualities that I do not possess. If you are a meeting freak like me, then you might like Seth Godin's Let's Skip the Meeting post.

I love his final suggestion. "Skip at least one meeting every day for the next two weeks. Watch what happens."

This is great advice. You probably don't need to get better at meetings. If meetings are a bad fit, do everything you can to avoid them.

Meetings used to consume most of my time and energy when I was a manager. I probably attended at least two meetings per day and some of them lasted for three hours or more. Now I am a college professor. There is a maximum of one meeting per week and it only lasts an hour. I didn't need to change. I needed to find the right fit. 

Comments

[David Rendall]

Megan,

Thanks for sharing the link to Seth's explanation of why he doesn't accept comments. I'm glad you took a minute to check out the blog. Hopefully, we'll see you again.

David Rendall

[David Rendall]

Dennis,

Thank you for your comment. That is a good point. It seems that there are few people who are good at managing meetings. Maybe that explains my bias, I haven't ever seen it done well.

You offer some good suggestions. I hope they catch on.

David Rendall

[dan]

luckily about half of my meetings are optional! but sometimes the ones I have to attend can be brutal.

[Megan]

Dennis - Seth Godin doesn't have comments on his site. He says why here - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/why_i_dont_have.html.

And I totally agree, meetings with lots of people never are very productive. One project I was involved in, the project manager thought we needed these huge long meetings. We always wanted to tear our hair out by the end...

[Dennis Gorelik]

1) I couldn't find how to comment on Seth Godin's blog :-O

2) The problem with meetings is not meetings themselves, but how they are managed. Most of the meetings should have two participants, sometimes three, but rarely more.
Meetings should have clear topics to discuss and should be limited in time.