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[fiona]

This is the best explanation I've ever seen for why meetings can be so draining.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/read-this-if-you-hate-meetings/?apage=2

Are you a manager or a maker?

Discuss.

The Fiona

[glowdart]

This part:
"I used to program from dinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one could interrupt me. Then I'd sleep till about 11 am, and come in and work until dinner on what I called "business stuff." I never thought of it in these terms, but in effect I had two workdays each day, one on the manager's schedule and one on the maker's."

is how I operate most days during the semester. 

Summer meetings make me angry because I have to write during the summers and I need multiple-day stretches of uninterrupted time to do so effectively. 


Of course, I also just hate meetings which are run by inefficient managers or by people who feel a need to call a meeting when a simple email or phone call would suffice.

[dr_evil]

Of course, I also just hate meetings which are run by inefficient managers or by people who feel a need to call a meeting when a simple email or phone call would suffice.

Agreed.  So many meetings I'm forced to attend could be avoided with a simple memo to update the necessary people.  The meetings aren't a discussion as much as a serious of mini-reports, many of which on subjects that don't relate to what I work on.  I just hope I haven't been caught grading in the back...or playing buzzword bingo. ;)

[antiphon1]

As a maker, predominately anyway, I can only say that I love my iphone.  

Yep.  I know, I know.  I shouldn't catch up on email, read articles or check the weather, but they made stop bringing books to meetings.  If my thumbs were faster, I could write, too.  I also grade during meetings.  What can I say?  Time is a wastin'.  

Just for the record, I only multitask in the mondo faculty mass information meetings.  

[zarathustra]

Yes yes yes!  This is SUCH an awesome article!  I'm totally in the maker mode.  During the year, my creative time is at night and weekends, so scheduling ANYTHING during those times blows away that whole chunk. 

[southerntransplant]

Most definitely a maker. I even subscribe to the dread and downcast feeling I have when there's a meeting even two or more hours away.

[annmarie]

Let me bump this thread back up.
I think that the article is interesting because it puts something in words that (some of us) suspected all along. 

Some can partition time into categories and do that well.  However, that seems to require a whole different type of thinking.  yes, I am predominantly a maker.

[barred_owl]

I guess I have more maker tendencies than I'd realized.  Even when I was working in a supervisory capacity, I disliked having to call staff meetings because I always felt like I was imposing on the time and continuity of activity of the staff.  But, of course, in that capacity I was expected to call meetings. Suffice it to say, I had to endure meetings to discuss with my supervisors why I didn't call more meetings; I even had one supervisor tell me flat out that I had to schedule meetings at least weekly, even if there wasn't much of an agenda.  In other words, I was supposed to hold meetings just for the sake of holding meetings.
Is it any wonder why I really, really do not want to go back to any such management position ever again?

P.S.--At the last place I worked in such a position, the organization's policy was to conduct performance evaluations quarterly.  Quarterly!  Not annually, not twice a year--every 3 months.  The result, given the number of people I had to evaluate, was a fairly continuous series of meetings...meetings...meetings...Ugh!

[london1]

As an administrator, I am a manager of meetings.  Much of my day is spent attending meetings with little actual time left to plan or implement.  Good article.  It explained why I experience some frustration and difficulty arranging meetings between managers (administrators) and makers (faculty).

[labronx]

I remember the first committee meeting I attended in the semester after I was awarded tenure.

We all sat down and discussed the coming year.

When it was my turn, I said: "OK, so, this committee... I'd like to make a suggestion.  We will not
refer to ourselves as a committee.  We will drop one 'm', drop one 't' and drop one 'e'.  We will call
ourselves a "comit".  And we will commit to working like a comet so I don't have to sit here for two hours.

I was not invited back on the committee the following semester.  And I avoid meetings like a plague.

[labronx]

I remember the first committee meeting I attended in the semester after I was awarded tenure.

We all sat down and discussed the coming year.

When it was my turn, I said: "OK, so, this committee... I'd like to make a suggestion.  We will not
refer to ourselves as a committee.  We will drop one 'm', drop one 't' and drop one 'e'.  We will call
ourselves a "comit".  And we will commit to working like a comet so I don't have to sit here for two hours.

I was not invited back on the committee the following semester.  And I avoid meetings like a plague.

Of course, maybe the other members were more determined to get out faster and realized that comets were elliptical by nature.

[london1]

I remember the first committee meeting I attended in the semester after I was awarded tenure.

We all sat down and discussed the coming year.

When it was my turn, I said: "OK, so, this committee... I'd like to make a suggestion.  We will not
refer to ourselves as a committee.  We will drop one 'm', drop one 't' and drop one 'e'.  We will call
ourselves a "comit".  And we will commit to working like a comet so I don't have to sit here for two hours.

I was not invited back on the committee the following semester.  And I avoid meetings like a plague.

I love this story.  I wish I could try this, but your words after I was awarded tenure don't apply to me, alas.

[larryc]

My guidelines for attending meetings:

1. If there isn't an agenda, don't go.
2. Expect nothing useful to happen.
3. At the start of the meeting mention that you need to meet a student in 45 minutes.
4. STFU. Every word you say makes the meeting last longer.
5. Bring a book or papers to grade or use a notepad to outline your next article (it looks like you are taking notes).
6. Be cheerful and pleasant.

[cityprof]

4. STFU. Every word you say makes the meeting last longer.

YES. It is amazing how many blowhard academics (all of whom claim to hate meetings) don't understand this point, or don't think it applies to them and their oh-so-important ideas. I like to hear myself talk as much as the next unbearably brilliant intellectual, but I stay as quiet as I can in meetings. Getting in that point about the impolitic word choice on page four of the curriculum proposal (or whatever) is usually not worth it.

[mondamay]

4. STFU. Every word you say makes the meeting last longer.

YES. It is amazing how many blowhard academics (all of whom claim to hate meetings) don't understand this point, or don't think it applies to them and their oh-so-important ideas. I like to hear myself talk as much as the next unbearably brilliant intellectual, but I stay as quiet as I can in meetings. Getting in that point about the impolitic word choice on page four of the curriculum proposal (or whatever) is usually not worth it.

Not only does saying anything during a committee meeting make the meeting last longer. It also opens the door for someone else to declare that there needs to be a subcommittee to look into the feasibility of said statement. And being the one that raised said issue you are nominated chair this subcommittee and report back to the committee, which can create an heretofore unplanned meeting of the original committee.

Say what you have to say and hold back the rest, unless of course it is to nominate someone else to serve on another committee.