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?"

Memo from your PHB

[Tx]

Memo from your PHB

We need to have a meeting to discuss these findings!

Well, no freakin' kidding!

[w.p.richardson]

More meetings = less time to do real work = perception (reality) of more stress!

In other news, the sky is blue.

Sample meeting...

[saskboy]

"...a general relationship between meeting load and the employee's level of fatigue and subjective workload was found"

OK then. To counter that, bosses should never assign work, or require work be done for a meeting. Make it more like, "Yo dude, what's up?" "Cool." "See Ya."

I don't understand

[gEvil (beta)]

I'm not sure I understand the findings. I know I'm always pleased when my boss "delegates" his full workload to me at a meeting.

Re:Memo from your PHB

[DuctTape]

... after you turn in your TPS report. You got the memo on that, right?

DT

God I hate Marketing

[FidelCatsro]

"Meetings are Bad For You"
No shit .. having an informal conversation with someone from a marketing Department for 5 minutes is bad enough.
Having to sit with them for an Hour as they drivel total Bullshit, is enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown

Shooting yourself in the foot?

[CoderBob]

Rogelberg has delivered this insight in a talk called "Meetings and More Meetings," which he presented to a meeting at the University of Sheffield. He also does a talk called "Not Another Meeting!", which has been well received at two meetings in North Carolina.

Am I the only one that found this whole statement funny? I would think that they would release the paper to trade magazines and such to get their findings out, rather than waste time with meetings about how meetings are bad. That sounds like shooting yourself in the foot to me.

Re:central insight

[stupidfoo]

Don't worry, I'm sure the study was only partially funded by federal money...

Because-

[Hao Wu]

There's NOTHING more important than feeling good. We learned that in the '90s.

Something needs to be done about meetings... Perhaps more laws, counselling, medication... for the children.

True (?) Meeting Story

[TFGeditor]

I read in Reader's Digest many years ago about a plant manager who loathed meetings. A worker was injured on the job, which prompted a series of long "safety meetings." This propmpted the manager to post signs throughout the plant that read:

Work Safely! Accidents cause Meetings!

Re:God I hate Marketing

[FidelCatsro]

Come to think of it ..
Do you think that "Meeting related stress and depression" would get me off with diminished responsibility , if i perform a killing spree.
If so , I am going to invite the marketing department on a hunting trip ..A hunt for the ultimate Prey .. MAN

Are you lonely ? Call a Meeting

[COredneck]

I use to have this at my old job that was posted. Some of the high-ups were not impressed.

Are you Lonely ?

Don't like working on your own ? Hate Making Decisions ?


Then Call a Meeting !!!!

YOU CAN...

SEE people
DRAW Flowcharts
FEEL Important
IMPRESS your collegues
FORM subcommittees
MAKE meaningless recommendations
All on Company Time

MEETINGS

The pratical alternative to work.

disturbing paragraph from article

[grag]

There is something disturbing about this paragraph from the article:

Rogelberg has delivered this insight in a talk called "Meetings and More Meetings," which he presented to a meeting at the University of Sheffield. He also does a talk called "Not Another Meeting!", which has been well received at two meetings in North Carolina.

tps

[mjohnsond]

What's happening? Ahhh, we have a sort of a problem here. Yeah, you apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your T.P.S. report. It's just that we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports *before* they go out now. So if you could just remember to do that from now on, that'd be great.

Re:Memo from your PHB

[Anonymous Coward]

Agenda:

1. Mad dash to grab the last available seat.
2. Fiddle with starfish phone to find status of people conferencing in.
3. Figure out how to get slide projector to work.
4. Shoo away the person at the door looking for the sales meeting, after a brief standoff.
5. Show PowerPoint slides starting with new org chart
6. Ask if everyone can read the slides. "Well, maybe you can move up."
7. Someone asks a tough question. After a quick deflection fails: "Let's take that offline".

Re:Memo from your PHB

[witcomb]

We need to have a meeting to discuss these findings!

Just reading that post raised my stress levels. Whoever modded that up as funny should be sentenced to death by meeting.

Re:bollocks

[$RANDOMLUSER]

The Energizer Bunny died when they put his batteries in backwards and he kept coming and coming...

*ducks*

Video game industry meetings...

[__aaclcg7560]

When I worked at Atari, those of use who worked on Gameboy Advance titles could keep on working during a meeting as long as we could nod our heads and look interested at the right moments. Everyone else who didn't work on a Gameboy Advance title had to leave their joysticks outside and try not to look too bored.

Re:Are you lonely ? Call a Meeting

[Ours]

Yeah, I used to work for a client who applied to just those rules.
The guy took 45 minutes to 1 hour EVERY DAY of a 10-man team (all consultants and payed by the hour) for the purpose of making himself look useful.
A couple of guys slept during most of it, another instant-messaged and the rest of us felt our life-force been sucked out of us, slowly.
The meeting where 95% of the time pointless, and the guy scratched endlessly on his notepad every single word, nice and slowly (we had to speak slowly so he could note it all).

Other things that are bad for you:

[pvera]

1. Changing paradygms.
2. Drinking the kool aid at a meeting where business developers are present.
3. Falling for the "everyone please send HR a fresh copy of your resume to update your files" ploy
4. Trying to calm down a frantic coworker that is freaking out for a very minuscule thing without at least some caffeine courage.
5. Drinking the last cup in the coffee urn. I can promise you this: it will taste like boiled crap.
6. Eating that last donut from the meeting 3 days ago. The Krisky Kreme box has not moved from the coffee pot table and that one donut looks tempting as hell, but trust me: you don't want it.
7. Come-to-Jesus meetings for a project that is not yours.
8. Any brainstorming meeting involving your newly hired business developer, especially since you don't have a formal "business development" function.
9. Trying to explain to a frantic coworker that mail.app is not crazy and it is not ignoring rules.
10. Trying to explain the same coworker that classifying mail as "ham" helps the filter learn what makes a good email and avoids false positives.

Re:Things are different in sales

[acvh]

A thoughtful, intelligent, insightful post.

Therefore, you CAN'T be a salesman.

Except for the part about liking meetings. Every sales guy I've worked with loves meetings. They want to have meetings for everything - except when they're booking my time on conference calls.

In Summary

[timbck2]

Meetings = Bad.

Wasting time posting to Slashdot to complain about meetings = Good.

Re:Well, no freakin' kidding!

[teslar]

In other news, the sky is blue.

Looks grey from where I'm sitting. We should have a meeting to discuss this.

Re:God I hate Marketing

[FidelCatsro]

"While I can see the point they're trying to make"
I think the Point they are trying to make is

Boss : My ex-wife was a Web Developer , she ran off with my brother and half my money . SO YOU MUST PAY FOR HER SIN

Re:reminds me of a story...

[markov_chain]

I always found this part of the Tao of Programming a good way to think about bureaucracy:

A novice asked the master: ``In the east there is a great tree-structure that men call `Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with vice presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying `Go, Hence!' or `Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an unnatural entity be?"

The master replied: ``You perceive this immense structure and are disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?''

Re:reminds me of a story...

[Anonymous Coward]

The novice replied: "Branches fall from above and strike my head. Roots from below come up from the ground and try to strangle. The fruit the tree produces is rotten to the core. I tried to climb it once but the vulture in the branches wouldn't let me pass as I wasn't part of his species."

*****************
(I do like the original story though... ;) )

Re:Things are different in sales

[gstoddart]

I work in sales. The more that I can understand our products, the better of a salesman I can be. I"m not the type of person that will try to make up things because they want products to look good -- instead, I try to be as knowledgeable as I can, because from what I have seen, the more knowledgeable that the buyer sees that I am, the more trusting they are of me, and therefore more willing to buy what I am selling.

Gak! One of them has breeched the outer perimeter and is posting on Slashdot.

Rally the forces, we must stop the incursion of salesmen onto technical forums before the damage is too great.

I sense a great tremor in the force.

Re:Things are different in sales

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Gak! One of them has breeched the outer perimeter and is posting on Slashdot.

Rally the forces, we must stop the incursion of salesmen onto technical forums before the damage is too great.

An example of two statements with no relation to each other.