The true cost of another pointless meeting

(Originally posted on Medium)

Over the past two decades I’ve spent in the traditional working world. I can 100% say most humans (including me) waste the most time at their jobs.

I don’t mean they’re wasting time with with a job. What I’m talking about is the waste of time used when completing tasks in doing said job.

A lot of people over and under estimate the time it takes to complete tasks, and the required effort needed.

I find that time management, prioritisation and effort/output ratios’ skills are generally lacking with most of us.?Yet, this is not through much fault of our own.

You see, no one ever really teaches us about this stuff. Well, not very well in my experience anyway.

In the traditional workplace, the single biggest event that creates huge wastes of time are?meetings?(yes, get your pitchforks ready meeting lovers).

Back to back meetings all day, every day, is not a sign of productivity or being time smart?— it means you’re shit at managing time and actually delivering anything. Not only that. They’re also a huge sucker on your time than you probably realise and cost a small fortune to run.

If you disagree with me (and you’re most certainly free to do that). Just think about how much time is actually invested in a 1 hour meeting.

Let’s say you attend a meeting with?7 people for 1 hour.

It’s an hour of your time yes, but?the true time cost of that meeting for the organisation is 7 hours. As?7 people are contributing an hour each of their time to this activity, so you better be damn sure it’s going to be used well.

Ok, time cost is high but what about the financial implications. I mean 7 people in a room for 1 hour is going to be pretty expensive right? A great tool I like to use and share to bring this to life is?HBR’s meeting cost calculator.

When you’re debating the need for a meeting, I recommend you use this tool to calculate the average cost for this event and add the time output on top.

Does that meeting and use of your time make sense now?

My disdain for meeting culture is closely followed by the time wasters of ego-inflated long email threads (just pick up the bloody phone and talk like humans) and multi-day strategy events.

I’ve written a deep thought connected to this (which you can read here)?on a potential way to better manage time to boost productivity, creativity and avoid burnout.

The pandemic has blurred the line with the amount of time we commit to work and outside of work activities due to most of us being in the same place.

The zoom phenomenon has only accelerated bad meeting cultures to another level. One where fatigue is a very real and too often experienced feeling as a result.

The fastest way to productivity and a balanced energy level is a better understanding of making the most of time, not more bloody meetings.

Before you go…

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