Meetings are the worst

If I had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings'.- Dave Barry

There are different kinds of meetings. Some are to make other people aware of what has happened, some are for making a decision together, some are for getting things done, some are for brainstorming, some are highly structured, some are for meeting people you haven't met before.

Sometimes you can just show up at a meeting and wing it if called on. Sometimes you have to be prepared for a meeting. Either way, for some time before the meeting, whatever you're doing, you're thinking in the back of your head 'argh, a meeting, what will I say about progress on widgets?'.

Who likes meetings? The ones who call them. Organizing and leading a meeting makes you feel important. It's like a club, an exclusive club that other people aren't in. "Why wasn't I invited to that meeting? That affects me! I would have liked to say something!"

I find that the proliferation of meetings themselves comes out of a more modern desire to be considerate, transparent, and to be inclusive. You don't want to annoy non-key players. 

But it seems like there are always too many meetings. "My schedule is full, never time to actually do anything."

Some people are primarily managers and some primarily doers. A manager's job _is_ communication so their job _should_ be meeting with people. A doer is doing something (engineering the deployment, tweaking the spreadsheet, reminding clients about payments, making the training video). See this blog post:http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html. And they should be spending most of their time doing. Communication is necessary, but it cuts into time doing things.

Also, we're all a mix of these two. You may be a CEO and need to talk to the other execs, and clients, and investors, and give presentations. But you also need to prepare that ppt and practice your speech. And even if you're the assembly-line widget-53-orientation-setter-class-3, you still have to spend time discussing issues with your neighbors off-line.

Consider these tactics to make meetings shorter/unnecessary:

- have a clearly stated agenda (even as a document) with clear goals or if it is intended to be a discussion have boundaries and stick to them. An amorphous or non-existent agenda just means people will talk for an hour with little outcome.

- don't be shackled by hours and weeks. modify the schedule to once every two weeks, or just 1/2 hour (or both, or less).

- always try to end a meeting early (don't feel like the time has to be filled out). No one ever leaves a meeting early thinking they wished it could have gone on longer. If the end of the agenda has been finished, don't stretch it out, it's done. If there are any further questions. 

Some people spend all their energy trying to figure out when is the last moment to jump in with an idea or question and it may come at the end.

- assign a non-key participant to be a facilitator (this is difficult to get, to perform, and loses that person's time)

- stick mostly to guidelines but be lenient. If a talk veers off the agenda (a problem is being solved but the meeting is about discussion), then schedule a meeting for the problem solving -or- be open about modifying the agenda (just stating an agenda item is often enough and details haven't changed).

- someone, not a key-player, should take notes (could be facilitator)

- record action items discovered.

These last few tend to increase the energy spent on a meeting. They're intended to increase the worth of the meeting. If a meeting's importance doesn't call for this prep, then maybe it doesn't have to be that long or have that many people.