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Boring meetings are great opportunities to catch up with unread mail.
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Sure.
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Or to plan your next vacation.
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Or to recall that party you had over the weekend.
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But if you're wondering whether that meeting is really the best use of your
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time at that moment, why not address the cause instead of the symptoms?
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Why not work to prevent boring meetings from happening rather
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than look for ways to reuse boring meeting time with a second activity.
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If you're following that podcast a bit longer, you know, that I prefer to
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meet for a doing rather than a meeting.
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But if it absolutely has to be a meeting, here are a couple of ideas.
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First cut the meeting to one third.
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And mean it.
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This is easy if everyone leaves out the boring two-thirds.
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Or second, take a vote five minutes into each presentation,
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Do you want to learn more?
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And only move on.
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If the majority vote is yes.
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And actually you will be amazed at how much relevance
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you can fit into five minutes.
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Or third, use the sorry principle which goes like this.
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“Who gives a damn?” at any point during the meeting.
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If the presenter or the meeting leader, doesn't have a compelling answer
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to that question, the presentation or even the whole meeting is over.
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Or fourth, like Amazon for go presentations in favor of a study hall.
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Instead of presentations, employees prepare memos.
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Reserve, for example, 30 minutes at the beginning of each meeting,
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exclusively to reading these memos.
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That makes sure that the memos get read and thus are prepared well.
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Or fifth, publicly raid the meeting, as well as the organizer after the meeting.
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This way, you can quickly see who organizes and leads meetings in
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a way that makes a difference.
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Don't give into boring meetings.
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Change them.