5 ms·

The premise here is that meetings are chock-full of valuable and dense information. This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. There are al

by dvt 6y ago

The premise here is that meetings are chock-full of valuable and dense information. This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. There are also various linguistic theories that argue that actual information density (in spoken/written language) is significantly less than 95%. So the corollary here is that remembering 95% of a meeting is a waste of cognitive capacity. The better strategy would be to bullet-point and solely remember the most salient and important information. The author's efforts seem like an interesting "memory game," but there are better methods[1] for learning how to remember stuff, if, for whatever reason, that's your end goal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Haraguchi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Haraguchi

ThePadawan 6y ago
I have similar doubts, but only thinking of the kind of work meetings I regularly have. I think something like a non-technical interview "meeting" has a much higher information density.
jasoneckert 6y ago
I wholeheartedly agree that most meetings are a waste of time. In fact, a decade ago I made a very simple game for Windows Phone as it was launching called Meetingz, where you clicked on buzz words that you heard during a meeting to avoid going insane (while looking productive). After the meeting, it tabulated your BS index and compared the results to previous meetings. During its short lifetime, the app had over 11,000 downloads: http://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/killercodingninjamonkeys/ http://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/killercodingninjamon...
- afterburner 6y ago
  Clicking on a phone looks productive? I'm surprised, I thought it would make you look distracted and inattentive.
zwayhowder 6y ago
I think there is a big difference between a meeting with one other person - as the author describes - and a corporate meeting of 3 project managers, 2 business analysts, an enterprise architect and 3 engineers who didn't think to reject the meeting they absolutely didn't need to be at. Meeting 1:1 you range all over, I often have meetings with people that go from work, to our kids, to the weekend, to work, back to the kids and then to the pub. All of it is valuable, but not all of it is valuable for work. But a year later when I remember it was that person's eldest's birthday I've made a solid connection. Equally important is that not every brain works the same way, I'd be completely screwed trying to use Vasili's method as I have aphantasia. But that doesn't mean others wouldn't find it useful.
- nocman 6y ago
  "All of it is valuable, but not all of it is valuable for work." ^ you could make the argument that almost all of it is valuable for work. The connections you make with other people, even on things that do not relate to work, can have a huge impact on your relationship in the workplace. Even the stuff that just seems like nonsense, joking around, crazy dicussions about things that don't really matter much, etc -- sharing those things can be part of building friendship and trust, and that can be of great value for work. Of course, sometimes such things can have a negative effect, depending on the person you are meeting with. So you need to be aware of that. Some people are particularly good at building relationships this way.
- quesera 6y ago
  > But a year later when I remember it was that person's eldest's birthday I've made a solid connection. Everyone is different, and I applaud you for the effort involved, but I have to confess: This sort of thing mostly creeps me out. There's no way you remembered it organically, which means that you spent the conversation with me trying to identify items of personal interest that you could record and replay for some kind of social benefit/bonding. My advice, and this might be what you do already, is to make sure a) the _thing_ is important enough to remember on its own, and b) your "memory" is vague enough that I don't think you're CRMing me. E.g.: BAD: Hey it's your wife's birthday on Thursday isn't it? Wish her a happy 34th from us! OK: Hey your wife has an autumn birthday, doesn't she? I remember we talked about it last year around this time. Wish her a happy one! GOOD: Oh that's right, we talked about that last year. My wife has an autumn birthday too. Wish her a happy one!
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. Obviously, this depends on the company and the team. If your department or team is having superfluous meetings then clearly you need to address the elephant in the room before trying to optimize memorization. I’ve worked at companies that you describe and it is, indeed, miserable. However, once I moved to companies that took meeting discipline seriously (30 minutes max with few exceptions, agenda must be agreed upon ahead of time, people were expected to dismiss themselves from meetings that weren’t relevant) the value of well-run meetings became obvious. Fix the core problems first, then optimize. There are plenty of books, blogs, and articles about how to run proper meetings. If your company is the type that thrives on inefficient meetings and wasting time, you may have to ask your manager to step in and handle meetings for you so you can focus.
flreln 6y ago
You're totally right, and I should have clarified that the process I describe is for long informal conversations with thought partners, focused primarily on exploring interesting ideas.
tchalla 6y ago
> Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time Let's assume your premise is true. What can we do to change this situation? Here are a few things which have helped me 1. Define Key Objectives for a Meeting 2. Define Agenda 3. Agenda has 4 parts - Topic, Owner, Expected Outcome, Duration, Time 4. Owner - The owner of the part of the agenda is expected to own the topic and drive it 5. Owner needs to pre-define the Expected Outcome beforehand. Broadly, there could be three outcomes - Information, Discussion or Decision 6. Moderator should keep a strict check on Time. Sometimes, if there's a overshoot - the moderator should either ask for team agreement to continue the topic for a limited time (10 min - for example) until the Expected Outcome is reached. If not, stop the meeting and move on the the next item on the Agenda. Yes, all this is a lot of work. But this fruitful work can reduce the total number of meetings to 5-10% of your total work time.
- dvt 6y ago
  > Yes, all this is a lot of work. But this fruitful work can reduce the total number of meetings to 5-10% of your total work time. I totally agree, but I'm usually not in a position to change the culture around meetings, nor do I get paid enough to be motivated enough to do it. If I ran my own company, the story would, of course, be different.
  - tchalla 6y ago
    > I'm usually not in a position to change the culture around meetings, nor do I get paid enough to be motivated enough to do it. I can totally understand you can not change culture around meetings in the entire organisation. I would like to offer two perspectives. First, you could however change the micro-culture in most meetings which you are a participant. For example, "Hey! Thanks for the invite. What are the objectives for the meeting? It will help decide my participation for contribution". Second, if you are not paid enough, it is even the perfect reason todo so. It can buy back more time for yourself by reducing meetings! Overall, you basically do X for yourself and have more control over your work time. So, if you do not want to do it for the organisation - do it for yourself.
    - 6y ago
tuatoru 6y ago
> Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. Exactly why notes should be taken and disseminated. Without going to the lengths tchalla describes, simply stating meeting duration and number of people in attendance, and listing decisions made and expectations raised for deliverables will over time reduce the frequency and duration of meetings and make them more focused and effective. Simply seeing repeated examples of "the meeting took 1 hour 30 min with 7 people attending. We decided: - to use mid gray instead of slate gray for menu bar sub-elements" will eventually cause people to wonder, "why did that take so long?", while serving as a written record of decisions for those whose memories are shaky at 9AM Friday, and new team members. If you want to be a hard-ass, just multiply out the duration and number attending: "the meeting took 10.5 person-hours".
- baud147258 6y ago
  > If you want to be a hard-ass, just multiply out the duration and number attending: "the meeting took 10.5 person-hours". Then multiply by the average compensation to get the cost of the meeting But keeping a note of the decision(s) taken is useful, especially in case of later disagreement.
nelaboras 6y ago
He's talking about a different kind of meeting. A human encounter where you discuss and engage freely with another person.

by dvt 6y ago

ThePadawan 6y ago

I have similar doubts, but only thinking of the kind of work meetings I regularly have. I think something like a non-technical interview "meeting" has a much higher information density.

jasoneckert 6y ago

I wholeheartedly agree that most meetings are a waste of time. In fact, a decade ago I made a very simple game for Windows Phone as it was launching called Meetingz, where you clicked on buzz words that you heard during a meeting to avoid going insane (while looking productive). After the meeting, it tabulated your BS index and compared the results to previous meetings. During its short lifetime, the app had over 11,000 downloads: http://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/killercodingninjamonkeys/ http://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/killercodingninjamon...

afterburner 6y ago
Clicking on a phone looks productive? I'm surprised, I thought it would make you look distracted and inattentive.

zwayhowder 6y ago

I think there is a big difference between a meeting with one other person - as the author describes - and a corporate meeting of 3 project managers, 2 business analysts, an enterprise architect and 3 engineers who didn't think to reject the meeting they absolutely didn't need to be at. Meeting 1:1 you range all over, I often have meetings with people that go from work, to our kids, to the weekend, to work, back to the kids and then to the pub. All of it is valuable, but not all of it is valuable for work. But a year later when I remember it was that person's eldest's birthday I've made a solid connection. Equally important is that not every brain works the same way, I'd be completely screwed trying to use Vasili's method as I have aphantasia. But that doesn't mean others wouldn't find it useful.

nocman 6y ago
"All of it is valuable, but not all of it is valuable for work." ^ you could make the argument that almost all of it is valuable for work. The connections you make with other people, even on things that do not relate to work, can have a huge impact on your relationship in the workplace. Even the stuff that just seems like nonsense, joking around, crazy dicussions about things that don't really matter much, etc -- sharing those things can be part of building friendship and trust, and that can be of great value for work. Of course, sometimes such things can have a negative effect, depending on the person you are meeting with. So you need to be aware of that. Some people are particularly good at building relationships this way.
quesera 6y ago
> But a year later when I remember it was that person's eldest's birthday I've made a solid connection. Everyone is different, and I applaud you for the effort involved, but I have to confess: This sort of thing mostly creeps me out. There's no way you remembered it organically, which means that you spent the conversation with me trying to identify items of personal interest that you could record and replay for some kind of social benefit/bonding. My advice, and this might be what you do already, is to make sure a) the _thing_ is important enough to remember on its own, and b) your "memory" is vague enough that I don't think you're CRMing me. E.g.: BAD: Hey it's your wife's birthday on Thursday isn't it? Wish her a happy 34th from us! OK: Hey your wife has an autumn birthday, doesn't she? I remember we talked about it last year around this time. Wish her a happy one! GOOD: Oh that's right, we talked about that last year. My wife has an autumn birthday too. Wish her a happy one!

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> This is not true. Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. Obviously, this depends on the company and the team. If your department or team is having superfluous meetings then clearly you need to address the elephant in the room before trying to optimize memorization. I’ve worked at companies that you describe and it is, indeed, miserable. However, once I moved to companies that took meeting discipline seriously (30 minutes max with few exceptions, agenda must be agreed upon ahead of time, people were expected to dismiss themselves from meetings that weren’t relevant) the value of well-run meetings became obvious. Fix the core problems first, then optimize. There are plenty of books, blogs, and articles about how to run proper meetings. If your company is the type that thrives on inefficient meetings and wasting time, you may have to ask your manager to step in and handle meetings for you so you can focus.

flreln 6y ago

You're totally right, and I should have clarified that the process I describe is for long informal conversations with thought partners, focused primarily on exploring interesting ideas.

tchalla 6y ago

> Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time Let's assume your premise is true. What can we do to change this situation? Here are a few things which have helped me 1. Define Key Objectives for a Meeting 2. Define Agenda 3. Agenda has 4 parts - Topic, Owner, Expected Outcome, Duration, Time 4. Owner - The owner of the part of the agenda is expected to own the topic and drive it 5. Owner needs to pre-define the Expected Outcome beforehand. Broadly, there could be three outcomes - Information, Discussion or Decision 6. Moderator should keep a strict check on Time. Sometimes, if there's a overshoot - the moderator should either ask for team agreement to continue the topic for a limited time (10 min - for example) until the Expected Outcome is reached. If not, stop the meeting and move on the the next item on the Agenda. Yes, all this is a lot of work. But this fruitful work can reduce the total number of meetings to 5-10% of your total work time.

dvt 6y ago
> Yes, all this is a lot of work. But this fruitful work can reduce the total number of meetings to 5-10% of your total work time. I totally agree, but I'm usually not in a position to change the culture around meetings, nor do I get paid enough to be motivated enough to do it. If I ran my own company, the story would, of course, be different.
- tchalla 6y ago
  > I'm usually not in a position to change the culture around meetings, nor do I get paid enough to be motivated enough to do it. I can totally understand you can not change culture around meetings in the entire organisation. I would like to offer two perspectives. First, you could however change the micro-culture in most meetings which you are a participant. For example, "Hey! Thanks for the invite. What are the objectives for the meeting? It will help decide my participation for contribution". Second, if you are not paid enough, it is even the perfect reason todo so. It can buy back more time for yourself by reducing meetings! Overall, you basically do X for yourself and have more control over your work time. So, if you do not want to do it for the organisation - do it for yourself.
  - 6y ago

tuatoru 6y ago

> Most meetings are, in fact, a waste of time. Exactly why notes should be taken and disseminated. Without going to the lengths tchalla describes, simply stating meeting duration and number of people in attendance, and listing decisions made and expectations raised for deliverables will over time reduce the frequency and duration of meetings and make them more focused and effective. Simply seeing repeated examples of "the meeting took 1 hour 30 min with 7 people attending. We decided: - to use mid gray instead of slate gray for menu bar sub-elements" will eventually cause people to wonder, "why did that take so long?", while serving as a written record of decisions for those whose memories are shaky at 9AM Friday, and new team members. If you want to be a hard-ass, just multiply out the duration and number attending: "the meeting took 10.5 person-hours".

baud147258 6y ago
> If you want to be a hard-ass, just multiply out the duration and number attending: "the meeting took 10.5 person-hours". Then multiply by the average compensation to get the cost of the meeting But keeping a note of the decision(s) taken is useful, especially in case of later disagreement.

nelaboras 6y ago

He's talking about a different kind of meeting. A human encounter where you discuss and engage freely with another person.