A Note On Meetings

Published

My feelings on meetings (either in person or virtual) are a constant pendulum. When the meeting has clear value for me, I at best don't get disinterested by them and have the semblance of feeling productive. However, if there is limited percieved value for me in the meeting, I leave feeling drained of yet another hour in a shorter and shorter day.

Meetings are the default tool for most people who don't know either when or how to make a decision.

I've found that a more useful tool for making a decision has become the good old shared doc (currently Google Docs has become my go to at work because of how easy it is to create and share).

I use free-form docs to brain-dump everything I know about a specific topic when I need to make a decision, I then refine those thoughts, groom through them, share the doc for early feedback with coworkers, then I edit the doc and clearly outline the decision and share once more.

For me, this format is driving a shift of decision making processes from being synchronous by default to being asynchronous by default.