What We Hate About Meetings
Meetings, meetings, meetings. Some days, like yesterday, I feel like my day begins and ends in meetings. And I'm not even a manager.
I meet sources to hear about their new book or research or business; editors to bounce around story ideas; colleagues to grouse about all the freaking meetings. Yesterday I even met with two nice lady entrepreneurs who flew up from North Carolina to grill me on the cremation industry (being that I am an expert).
Funny thing was, when I was sick and working from home, the thing I missed was meetings. At least, I thought it was funny. I did this whole bit about it for an NPR anchor who was doing a segment on the unexpected aspects of working from home. She never aired it. I think she thought my meds had side effects involving delusion. Because everybody, I mean everybody, hates meetings.
What is it we hate most? According to Opinion Research USA's “Ouch Point” survey, a "new monthly study examining tolerance thresholds in a variety of common scenarios facing Americans in both their professional and personal lives," it's disorganization. Below, the top 10 things we hate about meetings:
1. Disorganized, rambling meetings: 27%
2. People who interrupt peers and try to dominate the meeting: 17%
3. Cell phone interruptions: 16%
4. People who fall asleep in meetings: 9%
5. Meetings with no bathroom breaks: 8%
6. Long meetings without refreshments: 6%
7. People leaving early or arriving late: 5%
8. People who check their Blackberries during meetings: 5%
9. Meetings starting late: 4%
10. No written recap of the meeting outcomes: 4%
That last point is interesting. It gets me to think: do most meetings lack a point? If so, why meet? Why hasn't someone come up with a drug that lets you be at a meeting but also shopping for groceries? Are there meetings in heaven? Or hell?
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Meetings can be an absolute waste of time, but can also be an absolute life saver. But certainly, 27% of the meetings tend to be rambling and pointless. Thus, we need tools like Money Timer to help us track the time and the cost of meetings. we need tools like this in order to track the true costs: good and bad!
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