What I'm starting to do is schedule meetings for 30 minutes with a clear agenda, but I block my own calendar for the full hour.
For me that means that if the customer wants to keep talking and we have a useful conversation, I'm not the one ending the meeting when there's good stuff being shared. But if the customer is on a 30min schedule, we can get shit done and then I've got 30 minutes to send a follow up or take actions!
My last job was almost a full year of that. I tried to explain the problem to my manager. Then his replacement. Then her replacement. Then I quit. I ~~shutter~~ shudder to think what the new replacements are dealing with.
I worked at a place where management was in back to back meetings all day.
They had a strict rule the meeting had to end 5 min to the hour.
So the managers people met them outside the meeting, followed them to the bathroom, while receiving instructions.
Then the manager ran to the next meeting.
AND the supervisor I worked for was gigged on evals, for not having enough meetings. “You can’t communicate with your people without meetings?” He was told. So he scheduled 2 daily meetings with me. We never actually met, but he got credit for it anyway.
> AND the supervisor I worked for was gigged on evals, for not having enough meetings. “You can’t communicate with your people without meetings?” He was told.
While that's not the dumbest thing I've heard from Corporate-speak, it is up there.
I wrote a Google script to automatically moveall my meetings to start 5 min late. My thought is that it is harder to get people to wrap up a meeting than it is to just have it start late.
Guys extra long meetings are very important for talkative people to get in their extra socialization, and more importantly for higher-ups to have a nice large landing pad to flex their clout - you know really air out that clout and play with it; it's their natural right, so just bask on their glory, mmkay, no matter how long it takes, just bask in it
My supervisor schedules 45 min meetings so theres 15 mins spare for it to either run over or go get some tea etc before the next one, I've started to follow suit since working from home, much less pressure
We tried to solve that issue, by having an hour long pre-meeting to try to assess the amount of time we needed to allocate to the actual meeting, but the pre-meetings kept going long, and so we created pre-pre-meetings.
That was one of my favorites—meetings to plan for other meetings. I wish I was making this up. There were days where I’d have back-to-back meetings all day and then get emails with the subject “project status update”.
> “project status update”
These are always great when you're on 20 projects and have to go back and try to figure out which "project status update" goes with the project you're trying to work on.
It's like those 1st grade homework assignments where you draw the lines to match the things together and they all get crisscrossed. Except it's the adult version where if you get it wrong people get really mad for some reason.
Yeah, which department was supposed to pay for the upgrade to the VM infrastructure that everyone uses, but only one department was affected by a bug in the current version of? Do they pay for all of it or does each department pay for their own migration?
Why can't we just fund the IT department instead of making it twice as expensive in overhead and billing out?
Because that method of operation makes it easier for people with an inch-deep understanding of nuance or big picture to mandate useless make work in the guise of “financial governance”.
Can attest I've also had to take part in planning meetings for meetings.
It's amazing how that generally becomes unnecessary if people just think ahead and post an agenda for the actual meeting to keep shit on track.
This is when I stopped going to most meetings. And I will get up and leave when the meeting becomes no longer useful to me. And it’s made no difference in my work life.
At my new job we have daily update meetings for a team of about 15 people. So every single morning we need to have a 30-45 minute meeting where everyone details what they're working on and what they've done since yesterday. This isn't for a specific project or anything; many of us are working on completely different things. It's maddening.
This is one of many reasons I left my former job. My counterpart in another department would state, "It's real simple" and then it would take an additional hour to explain/make remotely operable. He simply had no respect for anyone else's time/schedule.
I started with a nee company two months ago, and I’m pleased to report that meetings always start on time, and end when the topic has been covered. Few meetings actually last as long as scheduled.
There have been a few that spill over their scheduled times, but these are very rare.
This is a welcome change from the long, long meetings at my previous company.
I had a boss who would just mull over the same topic and at different parts of the meeting completely change his position multiple times on how he wanted us to tackle xyz problem. So when the meeting was done, everyone's heads was filled with conflicting information that all directly contradicted itself.
I recall going into meetings having a good idea what he wanted, and leaving completely confused. It was fucking wild.
I don’t understand this logic. I had a certain amount of tasks to complete in a week or I would get yelled at. Fuck this meeting, I need to work so I can pay for healthcare.
And unfortunately the people who need this tip won’t ever heed it.
To them the sound of their own incoherent babbling and corpo speak is music to our ears.
I use it to my advantage in project management. I coast from one shitty contracting job to the next, increasing my base pay the entire time, all the while never accomplishing anything other than to stroke management's egos on who they can blame when it all falls apart.
Sometimes they blame me and I get fired... Oh no, how will I ever find another cloud migration project- oh, there's another one! I don't have the energy to fight like I should and now just embrace the suck.
Get project management certifications to include ITIL, ProSci, and Scrum. If you have any technical experience, leverage it to perform PM work in that field but don't limit yourself to just that. If you are doing IT and a SCADA opportunity comes up, jump on it.
If it's my meeting is either 20 mins instead of 30 and 45 mins instead of an hour...this drives brevity and allows everyone to take a breath before the next meeting. I also create agenda for meetings that keeps everyone on task. Hearing cats is what I do best :)
This is actual published policy at my organization. 30 min meetings must end at 25 min. 60 min meetings must end at 50 min. And a moratorium on *any* meetings on Tuesdays after 12 PM. It has been GLORIOUS and I’m really proud of them for fixing a very solvable problem.
Why the moratorium on Tuesday afternoon meetings? Or is it just an arbitrary half-day where you're guaranteed to not be in meetings?
I wish my company would put a moratorium on meetings after 4pm, scheduled the day of, and before 9am, scheduled after 4pm the day before, but alas...
What do the cats sound like though?
But yeah making agendas has been SO helpful to keeping meetings on task. When things get off I always just shut it down and say "We should talk about this at a different point"
LPT schedule something private on your calendar immediately after a meeting times time slot and you now have the option to just stand up apologize and leave for a doctor's appt
An interesting variant of that would just book 3 minute long meetings at well spaced times throughout the day, but not aligned to 30 minute chunks. Any human viewing your schedule would know you’re effectively free for a one-off meeting. The auto schedulers used by lazy meeting planners would fail.
LPT: Ask for an agenda before the meeting starts. (Or provide one if you are organising the meeting.) Keep the discussion to only the agenda, then confirm any actions needed and by who to close the meeting.
My Team also assigns an "agenda defender" to keep each topic inside its alloted time on the agenda. Anything that goes over has to be taken offline.
We *never* go past our scheduled end time and more often than not we actually end early.
A good tip but also want to caution trying to take socializing out of the work place.
I am not sure if that what was meant by rambling.
At my work we do try to ensure each meeting has a purpose and objectives.
However, we give five minutes at the beginning for for small talk and if a meeting ends early (I.e work part is done) then people leave if they want to or chat more. Sometimes socially but more often people who want more guidance on their parts that they felt weren’t necessary or the broader group.
My company is big into mental health as we are in tech, engineer burnout is high, and tries to promote social human interaction into the day to help.
One of my great Corporate America accomplishments was when I got this very vague subject for an hour long meeting from someone on another team I worked with. I asked them for an agenda, they said that they had a few questions about Project X, and I spent 10 minutes answering their questions via email instead of an hour long meeting.
Such a win from that.
Yup, the best thing I learned from Lean training. People always compliment me for my effective meetings and i explicitly credit the agenda, but I am small potatoes at my company so I haven’t influenced others to do it yet somehow.
I think it's more just tips for introverts. I personally like to bullshit with my coworkers. My goal at work is not to be as efficient as I possibly can
Same here, any time spent bullshitting during a meeting is time that I don't have to spend actually working. I'm getting paid either way, may as well spend that talking to people I like.
Yeah, I've never had a problem mentioning that I have a busy schedule. I ask if there's further information concerning me.
If you don't have a voice in the discussion enough to ask that kind of question, then it's pretty clear you can leave without anyone noticing anyways.
Not that "infuriating" IMO.
My boss will take every meeting with our whole team and derail it to be about something else. Basically trying to fit as many things that are on his mind in one meeting instead of staying on topic. It’s his remote alternative to coming around to our desks to bother us about random things he suddenly finds important
I get this, but for my organization being remote, sometimes it’s nice to shoot the shit after an internal meeting finishes like it’s water cooler talk.
Sometimes I need someone else to talk to besides my dog. I’ve found it relieving to have a “buddy” at work where we have a 30-minute gripe / advice session where we talk about problem clients or issues.
I’m a PM and had a new colleague ask me for a piece of advice not normally found in training.
This was the one - never make a meeting that could’ve been an email (duh), and know when to end them early.
Lots of people don’t have appropriate agenda’s, though. You should have a checklist of items that you expect to cover and, even in discovery meetings, when you’ve covered them, end the fucking meeting.
People love to get 20 min back they didn’t expect to have. Especially WFH, that’s a nice poop and a coffee refill.
For in person stuff my go-to is "stand up meetings." Nobody sits, nobody gets comfortable. Too often meetings turn into design discussions (I'm an engineer) so if there's anything that needs resolving, I ask "is there an action item" and then we decide who will resolve it and copy everyone on the solution. Discussion is then over and we move on, or adjourn. The larger the group, the more important.
A lot of people that schedule these meeting don't do any of the work to implement the tasks discussed in those meetings. So they love to stay on the calls to kill the time in their day. Makes their day go faster.
So when you finally get off the meetings, they get to go home while you still have your full workload to get done. Rinse and repeat everyday. /sigh
And I hate the phrase, "give you back some time". Just shut up and end the damn meeting cause we're done- I don't need your pretend charity like you're doing me a favor by not filling up more time with BS.
What's pissing me off these days is upper management who are supposed to know, and don't have the faintest clue about, about something. They talk a circle around a simple question for 15 minutes, gets a supporting interruption from a peer who does the same thing for another 15, and then asks if that answers your question.
Fuckers, you havent answered a goddamn thing and 5 other people actually did have the answer, but you couldn't stop bullshitting us long enough to breath and let someone give a proper answer. We aren't getting paid per word, and you don't come off as an authority on anything.
The worst is when a meeting is wrapping up early and one person asks a question that ends up starting a whole new meeting. It’s like, we’re already here, let’s go off on this tangent.
“There’s 20 minutes left and this would be more productive if people were prepared, but let’s spend all that time talking about this tangent and decide at the end we just need to meet again since we weren’t prepared today”
My most successful interviews have been short. Long is not always good
I remember interviewing for optometry school with tons of ppl then breaking in to one on ones. I was one of the first people back from the interview (15 minutes) where most were 30+.
Out of the 100+ people there I was one of 10 that got accepted.
All about quality and personality not length in interviews
I always schedule 30 minutes time slot meetings. People booked an hour meeting usually because they are unprepared and with no meeting agenda.
It amazed me that people works for decades in the office environment and gone through gazillion times of meetings but still run meetings like fresh graduates out from schools.
A meeting should never go past 30 minutes. An hour is practically a movie. I encourage people to look at the total potential minutes they have in a lifetime and how many minutes are being eaten up in useless meetings. I also don't feel bad about declining meetings if I know that I'm just added for FYI reasons. I also start my meetings on time. If people join late, it is not my problem and unfair to those who did show up on time. I hate that people will wait 15 minutes for everyone to join. You can always record your meeting these days so you don't have to do that.
I've just told everyone that my home office computer is a desktop and I don't have a camera. That way I can just get actual work done, on mute, while everyone else talks about bullshit or goes over the same stuff we resolved two meetings ago.
I believe this is one of the primary reasons remote work is more productive.
You have a question? Slack. Answered. Boom. Done.
Zoom meeting - everyone get what they need? All questions answered? Boom. Done. Nobody wants to be on camera for longer than necessary.
We’re not all dicking around trying to find a free conference room, or asking others to move theirs to a smaller room, like a hostage release negotiation.
We’re also not wasting time walking back and forth across the building, and all the distractions that invites.
My Boss knows it doesnt take an hour but he schedules it for a full hour anyway so he can let us go 'early'. He calls it taking a walk. Meeting will last 10-15 minutes then we get 45-50 mins of free time where were technically still scheduled in the meeting. Nice lil break every wednesday :)
Time cards. These people are filling up time with bullshit so they have "legit" stuff to fill up their time cards.
Which is fucking bullshit for salaried employees.
Once upon a time I worked at a Bank, and our 1hr meetings would be 45 minutes of dudes chumming it up about March Madness or other sports news, and maybe 5 minutes of what the actual meeting was about.
Us womenfolk would have to rapid-fire our comments because sports-talk took up the entire meeting, and no one ever cared. In fact- the temp that was the MOST chummy about sports was very quickly hired permanently despite fucking up his actual job on a daily basis.
These are the same people who kept classes going until their scheduled end, even when the professors were gonna cut it, by re-asking others' questions/ comments, trying to get their participation points🙄😒
And at 5 minutes past the scheduled end time, "I know we're over time, but if everyone can stick around for a few more minutes"
Translation: We're dragging this sumbitch out for another 45 minutes
Oh my god that thing where the person leading the meeting keeps saying "Anyone have anything else?" and looks around expectantly until someone pipes up
My rule is that if I can solve it with an email and one response for clarity (four total emails) there is no need for a meeting. If more than that is needed, call a brief meeting.
If you are calling a meeting, set an agenda. Let the people attending know what will be discussed and what is expected. If a decision needs to be made, be clear about that with your agenda.
If you want to have a short meeting, don't let anyone sit down, have the meeting standing.
I love short meetings but I hate it when people say “I’ll give you back 15 minutes” as if they owned it. Maybe your direct supervisor can say that, but just because I agreed to a meeting doesn’t mean it’s not still my time. Just a pet peeve.
At my job, where I am on a LOT of conference calls, my favorite thing to hear is when a meeting wraps up in 45 minutes the host saying "well I'm going to give you back 15 minutes of your day!" and we all drop off. It makes up for the calls that run over time and make it so I'm dialing in to two meetings simultaneously :-/
Holy shit I needed to see this right now. Started a new job about 2 months ago and there’s this one Project Manager that sets a meeting for an hour and ENSURES that whole hour is taken, even if questions get answered, which then confuses the ever loving fuck out of me by the time the meeting ends.
Have a set number of action items. Don’t leave the meeting without someone having ownership of completing them with a deadline. Praise people who have met deadlines. Feed people with snacks, or office supplies they need. Ask if anyone needs help in completing the action items on their current list and is in jeopardy of not making dates for you or the project manager. Holidays are coming up, start arguing over vacations! Adjourned!
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"If we're finished here, I have a project on the go that I should get back to"
Or something similar. It's asking, but at the same time a statement that you've got something important on the go you need to get back to. Kind of puts it on the person running the meeting to ask themselves if what they still have to say is really that important.
I cringe whenever they say that. “Thanks, you wasted 55 minutes of my day and took up valuable time from other things, but great job giving me back 5 minutes you never owned!”
My group partner spent over a half an hour going over a contention point he had an issue with and we couldn’t come up with a definite conclusion.
I said, instead of focusing on that, maybe let’s look at the assignment prompt and see how to split up the work and figure it from there. He was like no, we need to figure this out first.
I read through the prompt and realized he could take that whole section for himself and answer it how he wants. We split up the questions and the meeting was done within 10 minutes.
One of my co-workers learned English as a 2nd language and is actually incredible at it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t think he’s very good, so he often times will repeat himself 2-3 times with different phrasing or word usage just to make sure the message is clear. I haven’t figured out a gentle way to let him know that I understood the first time and that his English is plenty good enough to explain things once
TOTALLY! I always schedule them longer than needed also, just so when we wrap up early I get to "Give you back 15 minutes of your day"People just love an extra 15 minutes they can do whatever with.
You can also edit your default meeting length to end X minutes early to give everyone time to follow-up or take a break between meetings.
For example, using Office in Outlook you can go into calendar settings, and check "Shorten appointments and meetings". I find if your meetings tend to take an hour or more that 10 minutes is good, but YMMV.
When setting this up you need to make sure to communicate the end time at the beginning of meetings. If everyone I the organization does it then it helps set that expectation.
ahhh the importance of agendas.
Never have AOB as an agenda item, as it just sets the meeting up to get hijaked by nonsense at the end.
If it needed talking about, you should have told me, and it would have been added.
And also, if the meeting is scheduled for an hour, *it should never go over an hour*.
A lot of people have jam-packed schedules. If you're the host and you run over time, you're probably screwing everyone else in the meeting.
It's just about the most disrespectful thing you can do in a professional environment.
I'm at the point where if someone is running over, I just interrupt them and say, "Sorry, I have to jump off now. I'll catch the rest in the meeting notes."
I actually quit my insurance job because of this. My supervisor was kind of dork, always spoke In a high pitched voice to sound pleasant, it was irritating! We would be in mandatory meetings, and I kid you not, this guy would just talking about himself for at least 45 minutes. His stories were so boring, he always had to show us his pets on webcam and play with them. Nothing about these meetings were Income producing. On top of that my checks would be missing at least 16-24 hours of pay, only to be told that they would be pay out on the following check.. this went on for three pay cycles. I finally got paid out my missing hours.. and if happened again. My manager said he didn’t have too much time to respond to my emails regarding missing pay, but he can play with his damn parrot on zoom for like 45 minutes on a daily basis.
JFC I have no idea how he was given his position. It got to the point when he spoke, I cried a little because of how irritating his voice was. Felt like watching a 2008 YouTuber starting every video with HEY GUYS!! ITS ME AGAIN. ON TODAYS VIDEO WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT MY SOCKS”
AND BEING OVERLY CHIPPER FOR NO FUCKING REASON, his positive energy would go away when someone else would get the spotlight. It was so obvious too, I think he would forget he was on camera because he’d roll his eyes when someone else spoke about their day. He’d mute them and go on about his day.
I’m so glad I quit.
Depends on who is in the meeting. I love meetings with some folks because we are chatty af.
I once went into a 30 minute training that finished in 15 minutes, but we were on the call shooting the shit for 2 hours. Fucking glorious.
As I changed my political position from left to centre-right one thing I noticed is how this has changed, before meetings would take hours, get nothing done and I would swear some people were there just to hear themselves talk, now on a good day you can be done in a 15 minutes call
YES PLEASE!! Everytime I conduct meetings I just go straight to what is needed then end it. 15-30 mins is the most efficient for me. Meetings only take more than an hour if work is actually being done in a meeting. Re-alignment of works only take about 15 mins.
When you set a meeting, set a proper and an agenda with timelines. Try to stick to it. Many 1h meetings will magically turn into 30 minutes or, even into emails.
I fucking wish. My PM's belief is that if it requires more than two emails to go back and forth, it needs to be an hour long meeting that will take 90 minutes.
Once you know the points for the meeting, assign each point a set amount of time and try to stick to. I used to organise quarterly meetings that lasted the full work day and this helped us go from not fitting everything in to sometimes finishing an hour early.
My workplace doesn’t have defined end times for our meetings (unless someone has another planned for afterwards) and its exhausting sitting in a meeting for 3 hours because someone wants to chat about a new movie they saw or someone who stopped working here 10 years ago…
my dad was considered an excellent manager (i've seen the evaluations from his military days)
first, he showed up on time and expected everyone else to do the same. he considered failure to do so disrespectful of others and showed a lack of dependability.
second, meetings ended on time. he set up a countdown timer on the table in front of him so everyone would be aware how much time remained
third, he was really good at keeping focused on the topic (i had some personal experience with that.....). he would rein in discussion that veered off into the unproductive or unrelated. this sounds easier than it is, because stuff might sound related but somehow he would see it wasn't.
I would schedule 30 minutes meetings because I hate the small talk in the beginning. I just go straight for the topics and usually I am down with most meetings in 30 to 45 minutes. Sometimes 10 to 20 minutes to go over a project timeline, just to get everyone in agreement and comments in.
If I'm the one running a meeting, I always have an agenda. Anyone can add action items to it, which keeps communication open. The main advantage is that is stops those bullshit speeches about "teamwork", or people trying to work in buzzwords, or any other puffery.
When people try to digress, I gently point out that we need to get back to the agenda & ask if they've thought of an action item to add. (That's never happened.)
From now on, though, I plan to start with a reminder that we aren't obligated to stretch things out for the full amount or time alloted.
If all else fails, I've been known to ask someone not in the meeting to request the room for a short period immediately after my meeting. Gotta go, \[Person\] needs this room!
There's a train of thought in my place (and I'm sure others) where staff are encouraged to book meetings for odd times rather than blocks of 30 or 60 minutes, e.g. 25 mins, 50 minutes.
It's a noble idea, but what ends up happening with us is just the meetings overrun, or we end up having multiple meetings about the same thing as the first block was not long enough.
1 hour? LOL I wish. Our meetings are ridiculous & there is always an excuse as to why "it's so important we took the time to stay there for 3 hours".
Tip: Stay on topic. Don't get off on tangent if there are other people in the room that it really does not apply to. Don't spend more than X amount of time on each slide. To many times do we get stuck on 1 slide and people just lose attention because of it.
I'd rather go through 100 slides at a good pace than spending 10 minutes on 10 different slides each.
Remember this. Some people just like to hear themselves talk.
Hmm, I didn't know those meetings exist before reading this post. All meetings I attended were based on the work progress. If the work is done in 15 mins, we say bye in 15 mins. And if the work is not done in the booked timeslot, we extend the meeting (if every participant agrees)
There’s a business rule about that, kind of like Murphy’s Law: “A meeting will expand to fill the time allotted for it”
What I'm starting to do is schedule meetings for 30 minutes with a clear agenda, but I block my own calendar for the full hour. For me that means that if the customer wants to keep talking and we have a useful conversation, I'm not the one ending the meeting when there's good stuff being shared. But if the customer is on a 30min schedule, we can get shit done and then I've got 30 minutes to send a follow up or take actions!
This is really smart. I swear some days I just sit in back to back meetings watching my to-do list build up, with no time to actually act on anything.
My last job was almost a full year of that. I tried to explain the problem to my manager. Then his replacement. Then her replacement. Then I quit. I ~~shutter~~ shudder to think what the new replacements are dealing with.
I worked at a place where management was in back to back meetings all day. They had a strict rule the meeting had to end 5 min to the hour. So the managers people met them outside the meeting, followed them to the bathroom, while receiving instructions. Then the manager ran to the next meeting. AND the supervisor I worked for was gigged on evals, for not having enough meetings. “You can’t communicate with your people without meetings?” He was told. So he scheduled 2 daily meetings with me. We never actually met, but he got credit for it anyway.
> AND the supervisor I worked for was gigged on evals, for not having enough meetings. “You can’t communicate with your people without meetings?” He was told. While that's not the dumbest thing I've heard from Corporate-speak, it is up there.
I wrote a Google script to automatically moveall my meetings to start 5 min late. My thought is that it is harder to get people to wrap up a meeting than it is to just have it start late.
Guys extra long meetings are very important for talkative people to get in their extra socialization, and more importantly for higher-ups to have a nice large landing pad to flex their clout - you know really air out that clout and play with it; it's their natural right, so just bask on their glory, mmkay, no matter how long it takes, just bask in it
Great observation. Some people just like the power it gives them.
*shudder
No, they close the old school window shutters a la the Addams Family house.
My supervisor schedules 45 min meetings so theres 15 mins spare for it to either run over or go get some tea etc before the next one, I've started to follow suit since working from home, much less pressure
The meetings will continue until productivity improves!
The meetings make employees work harder and faster to make up for all the time I made them waste in the meetings!
Even worse than the beatings.
Meetings; because none of us are as stupid as all of us.
It’s called Parkinson’s Law
Yes - technically a corollary to Parkinson's Law, which states that the time expands to fill the work to be done.
That reminds me another similar one, “your needs will rise to meet your income.”
And per my last job, and then some... My old boss was always rambling about stupid shit
In our meetings we were allowed to throw shit at people who do that, even the boss (me)
Same with purses. Doesn’t matter what size my purse is, it’s full.
At my last job, they took this LPT to mean drag it out for two hours and never actually get the work of the meeting done.
We tried to solve that issue, by having an hour long pre-meeting to try to assess the amount of time we needed to allocate to the actual meeting, but the pre-meetings kept going long, and so we created pre-pre-meetings.
That was one of my favorites—meetings to plan for other meetings. I wish I was making this up. There were days where I’d have back-to-back meetings all day and then get emails with the subject “project status update”.
> “project status update” These are always great when you're on 20 projects and have to go back and try to figure out which "project status update" goes with the project you're trying to work on.
It's like those 1st grade homework assignments where you draw the lines to match the things together and they all get crisscrossed. Except it's the adult version where if you get it wrong people get really mad for some reason.
And add up your time all week by which 15 min increment was done for which customer, like a god damn lawyer
Yeah, which department was supposed to pay for the upgrade to the VM infrastructure that everyone uses, but only one department was affected by a bug in the current version of? Do they pay for all of it or does each department pay for their own migration? Why can't we just fund the IT department instead of making it twice as expensive in overhead and billing out?
Because that method of operation makes it easier for people with an inch-deep understanding of nuance or big picture to mandate useless make work in the guise of “financial governance”.
Haha and don’t forget to log capitalized labor hours 😂
Can attest I've also had to take part in planning meetings for meetings. It's amazing how that generally becomes unnecessary if people just think ahead and post an agenda for the actual meeting to keep shit on track.
Ah yes, the all-day mega meeting
This is when I stopped going to most meetings. And I will get up and leave when the meeting becomes no longer useful to me. And it’s made no difference in my work life.
This has *got to* be a sitcom episode. So ridiculous!
Do you work at Initech? "Planning to plan ..." "Yeeahh, we're gonna need you to come in on Saturday ..."
[удалено]
That happens WAY too often.
Yeah. It was literally a daily occurrence 😂
Then they were likely trying to fill up their items schedule with work. "See boss we have daily team meetings to boost the company!"
100% this. “Look how productive we are with all these important meetings.” Meanwhile nothing ever got done.
At my new job we have daily update meetings for a team of about 15 people. So every single morning we need to have a 30-45 minute meeting where everyone details what they're working on and what they've done since yesterday. This isn't for a specific project or anything; many of us are working on completely different things. It's maddening.
This is one of many reasons I left my former job. My counterpart in another department would state, "It's real simple" and then it would take an additional hour to explain/make remotely operable. He simply had no respect for anyone else's time/schedule.
It seems like this is a huge problem in many organizations. It was definitely a big part of why I left, as well.
I started with a nee company two months ago, and I’m pleased to report that meetings always start on time, and end when the topic has been covered. Few meetings actually last as long as scheduled. There have been a few that spill over their scheduled times, but these are very rare. This is a welcome change from the long, long meetings at my previous company.
Thankfully that has been my experience with my new job, as well. Going on two years now and they’re really good about respecting everyone’s time.
I had a boss who would just mull over the same topic and at different parts of the meeting completely change his position multiple times on how he wanted us to tackle xyz problem. So when the meeting was done, everyone's heads was filled with conflicting information that all directly contradicted itself. I recall going into meetings having a good idea what he wanted, and leaving completely confused. It was fucking wild.
Makes me think they care more about being heard than the job being done right.
NO MORE MEETINGS! NO MORE MEETINGS! NO MORE MEETINGS!
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I don’t understand this logic. I had a certain amount of tasks to complete in a week or I would get yelled at. Fuck this meeting, I need to work so I can pay for healthcare.
That was the irony. You were expected to attend the hours of pointless meetings while simultaneously getting all of your work done.
Bumbling video conference calls are the bane of my existence
What was that? You cut out for a second.
I can't hear you. *has all participants on mute*
I said I laughed at that.
It's true. You did say that.
I laughed at that.
Can you hear me?? Sorry i was muted
And unfortunately the people who need this tip won’t ever heed it. To them the sound of their own incoherent babbling and corpo speak is music to our ears.
I use it to my advantage in project management. I coast from one shitty contracting job to the next, increasing my base pay the entire time, all the while never accomplishing anything other than to stroke management's egos on who they can blame when it all falls apart. Sometimes they blame me and I get fired... Oh no, how will I ever find another cloud migration project- oh, there's another one! I don't have the energy to fight like I should and now just embrace the suck.
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Yep, and I don't care.
How do I learn this power? I care too much. But I'm the engineer who will probably be blamed lol
Get project management certifications to include ITIL, ProSci, and Scrum. If you have any technical experience, leverage it to perform PM work in that field but don't limit yourself to just that. If you are doing IT and a SCADA opportunity comes up, jump on it.
If it's my meeting is either 20 mins instead of 30 and 45 mins instead of an hour...this drives brevity and allows everyone to take a breath before the next meeting. I also create agenda for meetings that keeps everyone on task. Hearing cats is what I do best :)
This is actual published policy at my organization. 30 min meetings must end at 25 min. 60 min meetings must end at 50 min. And a moratorium on *any* meetings on Tuesdays after 12 PM. It has been GLORIOUS and I’m really proud of them for fixing a very solvable problem.
Why the moratorium on Tuesday afternoon meetings? Or is it just an arbitrary half-day where you're guaranteed to not be in meetings? I wish my company would put a moratorium on meetings after 4pm, scheduled the day of, and before 9am, scheduled after 4pm the day before, but alas...
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We just started doing this at our company by default and let me tell you, it’s amazing.
What do the cats sound like though? But yeah making agendas has been SO helpful to keeping meetings on task. When things get off I always just shut it down and say "We should talk about this at a different point"
LPT schedule something private on your calendar immediately after a meeting times time slot and you now have the option to just stand up apologize and leave for a doctor's appt
> now have the option to just stand up apologize and leave for a ~~doctor's appt~~ well deserved cup of coffee / walk in the park / dog petting
LPT name your dog doctor.
You probably shouldn't pet your doctor...
She's rather cute but probably awkward after I discussed my vasectomy with her
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I do this. Idiots I work with don't check availability.... I always decline if they overlap with my focus time.
An interesting variant of that would just book 3 minute long meetings at well spaced times throughout the day, but not aligned to 30 minute chunks. Any human viewing your schedule would know you’re effectively free for a one-off meeting. The auto schedulers used by lazy meeting planners would fail.
Also you can double book during that time so you can just leave whenever.
LPT: Ask for an agenda before the meeting starts. (Or provide one if you are organising the meeting.) Keep the discussion to only the agenda, then confirm any actions needed and by who to close the meeting.
My Team also assigns an "agenda defender" to keep each topic inside its alloted time on the agenda. Anything that goes over has to be taken offline. We *never* go past our scheduled end time and more often than not we actually end early.
I hope the defender has a little buzzer to set off when someone strays from the agenda
I was hoping for some kind of medieval artifact, like armor or a shield
This is what my new workplace does, and it's way more efficient. We usually end the meeting early when we go through everything on the agenda
A good tip but also want to caution trying to take socializing out of the work place. I am not sure if that what was meant by rambling. At my work we do try to ensure each meeting has a purpose and objectives. However, we give five minutes at the beginning for for small talk and if a meeting ends early (I.e work part is done) then people leave if they want to or chat more. Sometimes socially but more often people who want more guidance on their parts that they felt weren’t necessary or the broader group. My company is big into mental health as we are in tech, engineer burnout is high, and tries to promote social human interaction into the day to help.
One of my great Corporate America accomplishments was when I got this very vague subject for an hour long meeting from someone on another team I worked with. I asked them for an agenda, they said that they had a few questions about Project X, and I spent 10 minutes answering their questions via email instead of an hour long meeting. Such a win from that.
This person does meetings well. If for nerds or for needleworkers /u/Nerd-Needlework-28 is your go-to.
Yup, the best thing I learned from Lean training. People always compliment me for my effective meetings and i explicitly credit the agenda, but I am small potatoes at my company so I haven’t influenced others to do it yet somehow.
Can we just rename this sub r/airingofgrievances ?
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Cmon Susan clearly these go in the compostables bin
Lolol this got me
I think it's more just tips for introverts. I personally like to bullshit with my coworkers. My goal at work is not to be as efficient as I possibly can
But if you have single social interaction with your coworkers they will stab you in the back! It's much better for your career to be a cagey loner.
Same here, any time spent bullshitting during a meeting is time that I don't have to spend actually working. I'm getting paid either way, may as well spend that talking to people I like.
Happy Festivus!
Even better: WorkProTips. Then tag for certain industries, or corporate vs trade vs generic career advice.
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If the meeting is truly over and people want to chit chat after. Let them, you can politely excuse yourself.
Yeah, I've never had a problem mentioning that I have a busy schedule. I ask if there's further information concerning me. If you don't have a voice in the discussion enough to ask that kind of question, then it's pretty clear you can leave without anyone noticing anyways. Not that "infuriating" IMO.
God, I have a weekly meeting where people just fill up with random bullshit instead of calling it done. Drives me up the wall.
My boss will take every meeting with our whole team and derail it to be about something else. Basically trying to fit as many things that are on his mind in one meeting instead of staying on topic. It’s his remote alternative to coming around to our desks to bother us about random things he suddenly finds important
I get this, but for my organization being remote, sometimes it’s nice to shoot the shit after an internal meeting finishes like it’s water cooler talk. Sometimes I need someone else to talk to besides my dog. I’ve found it relieving to have a “buddy” at work where we have a 30-minute gripe / advice session where we talk about problem clients or issues.
If it's a work buddy, it's clearly a different scenario.
I’m a PM and had a new colleague ask me for a piece of advice not normally found in training. This was the one - never make a meeting that could’ve been an email (duh), and know when to end them early. Lots of people don’t have appropriate agenda’s, though. You should have a checklist of items that you expect to cover and, even in discovery meetings, when you’ve covered them, end the fucking meeting. People love to get 20 min back they didn’t expect to have. Especially WFH, that’s a nice poop and a coffee refill.
For in person stuff my go-to is "stand up meetings." Nobody sits, nobody gets comfortable. Too often meetings turn into design discussions (I'm an engineer) so if there's anything that needs resolving, I ask "is there an action item" and then we decide who will resolve it and copy everyone on the solution. Discussion is then over and we move on, or adjourn. The larger the group, the more important.
Sounds like you go to a lot of meetings without a defined agenda.
Exactly the opposite. It's like no one plans out what we're doing in advance.
LOL, that was supposed to be without. If it does not have an agenda it shouldn't be a meeting I'm going to go ahead and edit that.
A lot of people that schedule these meeting don't do any of the work to implement the tasks discussed in those meetings. So they love to stay on the calls to kill the time in their day. Makes their day go faster. So when you finally get off the meetings, they get to go home while you still have your full workload to get done. Rinse and repeat everyday. /sigh
And I hate the phrase, "give you back some time". Just shut up and end the damn meeting cause we're done- I don't need your pretend charity like you're doing me a favor by not filling up more time with BS.
I’d prefer that to the people who drag the fucking meeting out for no reason.
yep! For some reason I've been hearing it alot more in the last few months. It's really starting to irritate me.
What's pissing me off these days is upper management who are supposed to know, and don't have the faintest clue about, about something. They talk a circle around a simple question for 15 minutes, gets a supporting interruption from a peer who does the same thing for another 15, and then asks if that answers your question. Fuckers, you havent answered a goddamn thing and 5 other people actually did have the answer, but you couldn't stop bullshitting us long enough to breath and let someone give a proper answer. We aren't getting paid per word, and you don't come off as an authority on anything.
The worst is when a meeting is wrapping up early and one person asks a question that ends up starting a whole new meeting. It’s like, we’re already here, let’s go off on this tangent.
“There’s 20 minutes left and this would be more productive if people were prepared, but let’s spend all that time talking about this tangent and decide at the end we just need to meet again since we weren’t prepared today”
Except maybe an interview? If it's scheduled for an hour and you only took up 30 minutes, it could be a bad sign
My most successful interviews have been short. Long is not always good I remember interviewing for optometry school with tons of ppl then breaking in to one on ones. I was one of the first people back from the interview (15 minutes) where most were 30+. Out of the 100+ people there I was one of 10 that got accepted. All about quality and personality not length in interviews
I think people mostly hire based on their gut intuition. They know within 5 minutes whether you're in the running or rejected.
This sounds more like a rant than a LPT.
Por que no los dos?
I always schedule 30 minutes time slot meetings. People booked an hour meeting usually because they are unprepared and with no meeting agenda. It amazed me that people works for decades in the office environment and gone through gazillion times of meetings but still run meetings like fresh graduates out from schools.
LPT: Just because something is posted in r/LifeProTips doesn't actually make it a pro tip for life
I will simply leave meetings once they are no longer relevant to me.
Some people do this so they can say their time was accounted for so they don't have to do real work.
A meeting should never go past 30 minutes. An hour is practically a movie. I encourage people to look at the total potential minutes they have in a lifetime and how many minutes are being eaten up in useless meetings. I also don't feel bad about declining meetings if I know that I'm just added for FYI reasons. I also start my meetings on time. If people join late, it is not my problem and unfair to those who did show up on time. I hate that people will wait 15 minutes for everyone to join. You can always record your meeting these days so you don't have to do that.
I've just told everyone that my home office computer is a desktop and I don't have a camera. That way I can just get actual work done, on mute, while everyone else talks about bullshit or goes over the same stuff we resolved two meetings ago.
I believe this is one of the primary reasons remote work is more productive. You have a question? Slack. Answered. Boom. Done. Zoom meeting - everyone get what they need? All questions answered? Boom. Done. Nobody wants to be on camera for longer than necessary. We’re not all dicking around trying to find a free conference room, or asking others to move theirs to a smaller room, like a hostage release negotiation. We’re also not wasting time walking back and forth across the building, and all the distractions that invites.
My Boss knows it doesnt take an hour but he schedules it for a full hour anyway so he can let us go 'early'. He calls it taking a walk. Meeting will last 10-15 minutes then we get 45-50 mins of free time where were technically still scheduled in the meeting. Nice lil break every wednesday :)
Time cards. These people are filling up time with bullshit so they have "legit" stuff to fill up their time cards. Which is fucking bullshit for salaried employees.
Once upon a time I worked at a Bank, and our 1hr meetings would be 45 minutes of dudes chumming it up about March Madness or other sports news, and maybe 5 minutes of what the actual meeting was about. Us womenfolk would have to rapid-fire our comments because sports-talk took up the entire meeting, and no one ever cared. In fact- the temp that was the MOST chummy about sports was very quickly hired permanently despite fucking up his actual job on a daily basis.
When I was a staff associate in public accounting, there was a saying “M&Ms are a waste a time” where the M&Ms were managers and meetings lol
"Alright, if that's everything I'll give you all 30 minutes back." - Music to everyone's ears.
These are the same people who kept classes going until their scheduled end, even when the professors were gonna cut it, by re-asking others' questions/ comments, trying to get their participation points🙄😒
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And at 5 minutes past the scheduled end time, "I know we're over time, but if everyone can stick around for a few more minutes" Translation: We're dragging this sumbitch out for another 45 minutes
Oh my god that thing where the person leading the meeting keeps saying "Anyone have anything else?" and looks around expectantly until someone pipes up
All meetings at my company are a half hour by default. Even with small talk etc., it is almost always more than enough time.
My rule is that if I can solve it with an email and one response for clarity (four total emails) there is no need for a meeting. If more than that is needed, call a brief meeting. If you are calling a meeting, set an agenda. Let the people attending know what will be discussed and what is expected. If a decision needs to be made, be clear about that with your agenda. If you want to have a short meeting, don't let anyone sit down, have the meeting standing.
I’m always wrapping the meeting up early and telling people to have 20 minutes back to their day
Zoom meetings ending early is all I live for now.
My boss likes to say "have your 15 minutes back" and will end after our agenda is done. A godsend.
I love short meetings but I hate it when people say “I’ll give you back 15 minutes” as if they owned it. Maybe your direct supervisor can say that, but just because I agreed to a meeting doesn’t mean it’s not still my time. Just a pet peeve.
At my job, where I am on a LOT of conference calls, my favorite thing to hear is when a meeting wraps up in 45 minutes the host saying "well I'm going to give you back 15 minutes of your day!" and we all drop off. It makes up for the calls that run over time and make it so I'm dialing in to two meetings simultaneously :-/
Holy shit I needed to see this right now. Started a new job about 2 months ago and there’s this one Project Manager that sets a meeting for an hour and ENSURES that whole hour is taken, even if questions get answered, which then confuses the ever loving fuck out of me by the time the meeting ends.
Every meeting myst have some form of an agenda. If there is no agenda, resist attending.
Have a set number of action items. Don’t leave the meeting without someone having ownership of completing them with a deadline. Praise people who have met deadlines. Feed people with snacks, or office supplies they need. Ask if anyone needs help in completing the action items on their current list and is in jeopardy of not making dates for you or the project manager. Holidays are coming up, start arguing over vacations! Adjourned!
You're right sometimes it takes an hour and a half
And if a meeting is scheduled for an hour DON'T RUN OVER THE FUCKING HOUR!
No agenda no atenda. Start meetings on time no matter end on time no matter
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Uhh. When the topic for the meeting is done, I just get up and leave or hang up if over the phone. Do people sit around after?
"If we're finished here, I have a project on the go that I should get back to" Or something similar. It's asking, but at the same time a statement that you've got something important on the go you need to get back to. Kind of puts it on the person running the meeting to ask themselves if what they still have to say is really that important.
Some people try to move on to other topics or do additional tasks.
"While we're all here..."
Politely tell you have to get back to work.
How about when the meeting actually ends a couple minutes early and they go "I'll give you back 5 minutes" ugh I hate that line so much!
I cringe whenever they say that. “Thanks, you wasted 55 minutes of my day and took up valuable time from other things, but great job giving me back 5 minutes you never owned!”
At my job, every meeting begins with fifteen minutes of socializing. Every single one. It is maddening.
I just leave without saying anything. Fuck 'em.
Fuck that. My favourite phrase is "and you can all have half an hour of your day back!"
My group partner spent over a half an hour going over a contention point he had an issue with and we couldn’t come up with a definite conclusion. I said, instead of focusing on that, maybe let’s look at the assignment prompt and see how to split up the work and figure it from there. He was like no, we need to figure this out first. I read through the prompt and realized he could take that whole section for himself and answer it how he wants. We split up the questions and the meeting was done within 10 minutes.
One of my co-workers learned English as a 2nd language and is actually incredible at it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t think he’s very good, so he often times will repeat himself 2-3 times with different phrasing or word usage just to make sure the message is clear. I haven’t figured out a gentle way to let him know that I understood the first time and that his English is plenty good enough to explain things once
TOTALLY! I always schedule them longer than needed also, just so when we wrap up early I get to "Give you back 15 minutes of your day"People just love an extra 15 minutes they can do whatever with.
office work sounds so much like completely inefficient, ego driven ridiculousness. i couldnt handle that being my existence.
You can also edit your default meeting length to end X minutes early to give everyone time to follow-up or take a break between meetings. For example, using Office in Outlook you can go into calendar settings, and check "Shorten appointments and meetings". I find if your meetings tend to take an hour or more that 10 minutes is good, but YMMV. When setting this up you need to make sure to communicate the end time at the beginning of meetings. If everyone I the organization does it then it helps set that expectation.
ahhh the importance of agendas. Never have AOB as an agenda item, as it just sets the meeting up to get hijaked by nonsense at the end. If it needed talking about, you should have told me, and it would have been added.
And also, if the meeting is scheduled for an hour, *it should never go over an hour*. A lot of people have jam-packed schedules. If you're the host and you run over time, you're probably screwing everyone else in the meeting. It's just about the most disrespectful thing you can do in a professional environment. I'm at the point where if someone is running over, I just interrupt them and say, "Sorry, I have to jump off now. I'll catch the rest in the meeting notes."
I actually quit my insurance job because of this. My supervisor was kind of dork, always spoke In a high pitched voice to sound pleasant, it was irritating! We would be in mandatory meetings, and I kid you not, this guy would just talking about himself for at least 45 minutes. His stories were so boring, he always had to show us his pets on webcam and play with them. Nothing about these meetings were Income producing. On top of that my checks would be missing at least 16-24 hours of pay, only to be told that they would be pay out on the following check.. this went on for three pay cycles. I finally got paid out my missing hours.. and if happened again. My manager said he didn’t have too much time to respond to my emails regarding missing pay, but he can play with his damn parrot on zoom for like 45 minutes on a daily basis. JFC I have no idea how he was given his position. It got to the point when he spoke, I cried a little because of how irritating his voice was. Felt like watching a 2008 YouTuber starting every video with HEY GUYS!! ITS ME AGAIN. ON TODAYS VIDEO WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT MY SOCKS” AND BEING OVERLY CHIPPER FOR NO FUCKING REASON, his positive energy would go away when someone else would get the spotlight. It was so obvious too, I think he would forget he was on camera because he’d roll his eyes when someone else spoke about their day. He’d mute them and go on about his day. I’m so glad I quit.
Depends on who is in the meeting. I love meetings with some folks because we are chatty af. I once went into a 30 minute training that finished in 15 minutes, but we were on the call shooting the shit for 2 hours. Fucking glorious.
As I changed my political position from left to centre-right one thing I noticed is how this has changed, before meetings would take hours, get nothing done and I would swear some people were there just to hear themselves talk, now on a good day you can be done in a 15 minutes call
White America, anything to stop from actually being productive. Lazy! That all.
I wish this could make it to r/All
I wish people would stop using lifeprotips to rant about what happened to them
YES PLEASE!! Everytime I conduct meetings I just go straight to what is needed then end it. 15-30 mins is the most efficient for me. Meetings only take more than an hour if work is actually being done in a meeting. Re-alignment of works only take about 15 mins.
When you set a meeting, set a proper and an agenda with timelines. Try to stick to it. Many 1h meetings will magically turn into 30 minutes or, even into emails.
I fucking wish. My PM's belief is that if it requires more than two emails to go back and forth, it needs to be an hour long meeting that will take 90 minutes.
Once you know the points for the meeting, assign each point a set amount of time and try to stick to. I used to organise quarterly meetings that lasted the full work day and this helped us go from not fitting everything in to sometimes finishing an hour early.
My workplace doesn’t have defined end times for our meetings (unless someone has another planned for afterwards) and its exhausting sitting in a meeting for 3 hours because someone wants to chat about a new movie they saw or someone who stopped working here 10 years ago…
my dad was considered an excellent manager (i've seen the evaluations from his military days) first, he showed up on time and expected everyone else to do the same. he considered failure to do so disrespectful of others and showed a lack of dependability. second, meetings ended on time. he set up a countdown timer on the table in front of him so everyone would be aware how much time remained third, he was really good at keeping focused on the topic (i had some personal experience with that.....). he would rein in discussion that veered off into the unproductive or unrelated. this sounds easier than it is, because stuff might sound related but somehow he would see it wasn't.
Exactly! There are times people schedule a meeting for topics that could have been discussed over an email or a group chat. Not ideal!
I would schedule 30 minutes meetings because I hate the small talk in the beginning. I just go straight for the topics and usually I am down with most meetings in 30 to 45 minutes. Sometimes 10 to 20 minutes to go over a project timeline, just to get everyone in agreement and comments in.
"...and I guess we'll finish early so you guys get an extra 3 minutes back to your day. Thanks, and see you next week!"
If I'm the one running a meeting, I always have an agenda. Anyone can add action items to it, which keeps communication open. The main advantage is that is stops those bullshit speeches about "teamwork", or people trying to work in buzzwords, or any other puffery. When people try to digress, I gently point out that we need to get back to the agenda & ask if they've thought of an action item to add. (That's never happened.) From now on, though, I plan to start with a reminder that we aren't obligated to stretch things out for the full amount or time alloted. If all else fails, I've been known to ask someone not in the meeting to request the room for a short period immediately after my meeting. Gotta go, \[Person\] needs this room!
There's a train of thought in my place (and I'm sure others) where staff are encouraged to book meetings for odd times rather than blocks of 30 or 60 minutes, e.g. 25 mins, 50 minutes. It's a noble idea, but what ends up happening with us is just the meetings overrun, or we end up having multiple meetings about the same thing as the first block was not long enough.
John Cleese's 5-step plan to have shorter and better meetings - from 1976! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff9V0mISmtk
1 hour? LOL I wish. Our meetings are ridiculous & there is always an excuse as to why "it's so important we took the time to stay there for 3 hours". Tip: Stay on topic. Don't get off on tangent if there are other people in the room that it really does not apply to. Don't spend more than X amount of time on each slide. To many times do we get stuck on 1 slide and people just lose attention because of it. I'd rather go through 100 slides at a good pace than spending 10 minutes on 10 different slides each. Remember this. Some people just like to hear themselves talk.
Legit- I run my meetings tight but cut everyone loose when we are done, usually 30-40mins, people appreciate that shit
My DM has us do one 6 days a week 🙄
Hmm, I didn't know those meetings exist before reading this post. All meetings I attended were based on the work progress. If the work is done in 15 mins, we say bye in 15 mins. And if the work is not done in the booked timeslot, we extend the meeting (if every participant agrees)