Meetings are part of the productive time.
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.
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.
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.
Forgot the pre-meeting dip of preparing for meeting or being in waiting-mode.
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.
I find it great when we have a meeting every other half hour. I get a lot done on those days.