The one thing that I like about daily "standups" (daily meetings rather) is to see my teammate's mug every morning for a brief moment, while taking my first sip

The one thing that I like about daily "standups" (daily meetings rather) is to see my teammate's mug every morning for a brief moment, while taking my first sip of coffee, and that scintilla of a moment when we wish each other a good day, all smiling, as our heart fills with hope that today is gonna be that lovely day where we'll finally experience the flow, the apocryphal stream of uninterrupted productivity. That's what a perfect daily "standup" looks like to me. But sadly, someone always feels the need to tell us what they had to do yesterday in great details and what their plan is for today, as I nod mechanically and cluelessly zone out. At some point I noticed that my teammates, including my manager, often are at least as clueless as me, especially when the verbiage becomes a bit too technical. I thought I'd do everyone a favor by simplifying things. So some time ago, shortly after the start of a sprint I tried a format that corresponds pretty much with what is generally understood from our little speeches, but said more directly: "well, I made some progress on that thing yesterday and I'll work a bit more on it today. That's about it." On the second standup of this, my manager asked that we have an impromptu demo that afternoon, which was really inconvenient, since instead of working on my branch, I now had to spend the morning preparing a presentation that he could understand. That's when I realized that daily standups aren't really designed to boost developers' productivity, but another tool that is easily misused by managers to give themselves the illusion of control. Don't ask me what I think of scrum, it would rhyme.