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Meetings are Bad For You
19061969 writes "Though this is obvious to most of us, your PHB's might benefit from knowing that meetings are bad for you. Two psychologists have found evidence that the number of and the time spent in meetings has a detrimental effect on mood. "...a general relationship between meeting load and the employee's level of fatigue and subjective workload was found", write the authors after conducting a diary study. Perhaps we should be more understanding with our moody bosses?"
Really, saying 'meetings are bad for you' is just a way for psychology to have influence over business management.
.. thats definitely bad for you.
..
Whats bad for you is over-psychologizing about all sorts of things
Meetings are good for people who have to work together and coordinate things together, and good meetings result in happy, productive people. Its quite possible to have bad, cheesy, Office-Space style meetings that go nowhere, but its equally possible to have effective management of meetings so that in fact, work gets done.
If all you do is sit around in the meeting room, psychologizing about things, then you'll definitely come out crapped out. Get work done, communicate effectively, use meetings as a proper tool. Then you'll feel good
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
To play the devil's advocate, I think meetings are a cost to an organization, and with all things with a cost need to be considered carefully. However, I have found, from both sides of the fence, that small team meetings to go over what other folks are doing on the team to be helpful. I've been working in product development for some time and the 30-45 minutes spent almost always reveals something of use to other team members. Also, it makes the team stronger sitting together and talking once a week. You just can't get all the information on what is going on from an e-mail or an updated percentage on a line item. Also, knowing there is a looming meeting where you face your peers is motivational, despite what some may say (or you just don't care, in which case I would generally not be interested in just not having you around ;-)
One helpful trick I've used is to bring something sweet to meetings and place them on the table. Sugar cancels most negative feelings. Also, let the team BS for about 5 to 10 minutes in the beginning of the meeting. A bit of a "gathering atmosphere" is also helpful and further helps build team unity.
The article is poking fun at the study. The author of the article is the organiser of the Ignoble Prize competition.
At one of my former jobs, fully half of each meeting was dedicated to other meetings. We'd spend about 15 minutes recapping the last meeting, and another 30 setting the agenda for the next one! I think it may just be for the reason you cited - even though the higher-ups in the meetings were 'constantly in touch with each other', they never really seemed to know what anyone else was doing or if any progress had been made. The net result was that I was pulled away from my work for twice as long as should have been necessary and got less accomplished than should have been possible.
Then again, I was working for the state...
I don't know if you noticed, but the author of the Guardian piece is Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, a publication which looks at genuine research in a mocking sort of way. They award the IgNobel Prizes for research which "cannot or should not be respeated". Abrahams books are absolutely classic.
of course, biting monkeys is not to everyone's taste - Konrad Lorenz
Having your manager review your presentation is bad.
Invariably, they will have recommendations to make. You could have spent your every waking moment working on this presentation, but that doesn't matter. They'll want to change a word here, make this boldface over here, change this color here, make this a line chart instead of a bar graph. They will want things changed. They'll want you to add tons of things which turn a simple presentation into something more like a narrative, a paper, or a book---something that someone could read without you even presenting it. Often, this has little actual affect on what's really being delivered by the presentation.
And, invariably, they'll want to review those changes again. And, of course, you see this coming, they'll want to change things again. Sometimes they'll even change things back to the way you originally had it. This process of change, review, change, review happens continuously up until the meeting is actually given.
What this has taught me is that it's best to hold your presentation materials until the day before the meeting, if possible, because it will dramatically reduce the amount of time allowed for the reviewer(s). Remember: The reviewer(s) are often people that have no real ability (or need) to contribute to the project that you're working on. These people exist solely to facilitate (i.e., add overhead). The less time you give them to review, the less time you'll be forced to make meaningless changes.
The most recent presentation I gave was reviewed by at least 50% of the group to whom I was presenting, including the two VPs (presumably the people who most needed to see the presentation). They all made recommendations. So, what's the point of me giving it exactly?
(Sigh.) I guess I'm feeling a bit demotivated today.