Rants About Wasting Time in Meetings

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⁓ Today's episode ⁓ is no structured recording. We are ranting about lots of things, technology oriented, client oriented, team oriented, the dynamics of all those things in between. ⁓ And that's what we're gonna listen to today. Episode four, welcome to Knot Brothers.

Yeah, everybody's missed the first half hour of this.

you ⁓ We didn't hit record and we should have.

That was some good stuff there. What was I getting ready to say? ⁓

⁓ It back to something, it back to original thing. ⁓ What hell are we talking about?

Talk about paradigm shifts and how Oodle as a company is moving from being a predominantly, I'll call it like work management organization to being predominantly in the innovation and technology space. We're still doing a lot of work, ⁓ managing a lot of work. We're trying to manage that paradigm of team members that haven't been used to that speed, that a little bit of fuzziness ⁓ in the how we work, what we're doing, ⁓ how it's going to work. It may not work. ⁓

Yeah, now I remember ⁓ it goes back to the original thing that I kind of like was talking about of you know ⁓ The least productive way to get work done is to schedule a fucking meeting Because I can either do work and figure stuff out or I can sit in your goddamn meeting and lose switching costs Before and after I can't do both So when we have these like, when I look at my schedule and my schedule is stacking up with meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting, then I have people like, hey, where's these features or are we working on this? No, we're not fucking working on that because you didn't invite me to four fucking meetings. Get rid of those, find a better way to coordinate that. And I think that's like. that becomes the challenge, right? When you're ⁓ used to managing work a certain way, and there are certain organizations, there are clients that we've had, right? That we've even had that discussion with them of like, hey, y'all mean a little too much. ⁓ And ⁓ so we ⁓ can certainly cut the cost on this. ⁓ gotta work on this meeting structure, because I can't meet with you every day for an hour.

It's hysterical. was looking through our NSA recently as part of a recent win that we had at Oodle. And we have some terms in that NSA master certificate agreement that are specifically designed for a handful of ⁓ problem clients. ⁓ And there are things like, ⁓ if ⁓ you schedule more than one meeting per week with me, I might have to charge you more. ⁓ It's stupid stuff like that that we wrote in over time because we had clients take advantage of that. This is meeting hell.

Yeah, ⁓ some of it's silly, but I mean, it is a real problem, right? We saw the problem then, we see the problem now. ⁓ I feel the problem personally on a daily basis, right? Like every day I'm looking at my calendar trying to figure out like, what do I have on my schedule for the next week that I can just delete and not go to? And it creates some friction. ⁓ ⁓ On occasions right where people are like why I need you to go to that meeting. Well, we'll just let me know when's a good time We'll reschedule. I'm like don't fucking reschedule it. I don't want to go Like send me the notes ⁓ or better yet Make it not a meeting right ⁓ and I think This is the paradigm shift that we're gonna experience With all of the technology convergence that we see happening today when ⁓ We have all these AI tools, we have autonomous workers, we've got agents that we can deploy, we have orchestration engines and things. ⁓ No doubt there are still times that having a quick conversation or an ad hoc conversation or clarifying something or brainstorming something ⁓ are incredibly powerful and useful, but it shouldn't necessarily be the default. ⁓ I get a little testy and hate when ⁓ The first step of something is well, let's just get into a meeting and figure this out I've been in a lot of meetings over the past 16 years I've never sat down in any meeting where that's the target and we figured fucking anything out What we figured out is a whole bunch of stuff for other people to go do or me or anybody To go do after that meeting to actually figure it out and then usually a meeting to come back together and actually share what that was so Wouldn't it be great ⁓ if there were other ways to do some of that? And I think it's challenging for people because it requires you to think through challenging things and figure out and clarify points, right? If you're asking for a feature for a product that we're developing, what do you want? What do you want it to do? How do you want it to work? Why is that important? Why should we prioritize that? ⁓ Those are all important questions that you need to ask.

And for whatever reason, people tend to be little uncomfortable doing that by themselves. And the meeting is like the nice little crutch. well, you can just ask all those questions and get the answers. Or you could just write them a fucking fizzy card and then I don't have to ask them.

It's a tricky balancing act. You said it earlier, right? So I think in some cases people use meetings as a crutch because they don't know what they don't know. So for them to sit down and write something up, they may be going in completely wrong direction or they may feel like they're going in a completely wrong direction with something, even if they're not, because they don't know what they're doing.

But isn't that bad? Let's pick at that. I do think you're right. think that is the challenge that most people have. Is they're like, I don't know what I need. I don't know what I don't know. I don't want to be wrong, whatever. And it's almost like perfection is the enemy of the, what is the fucking thing? It's in your office.

⁓ done is better than perfect is in the office. But what I always say is don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

Yeah, there you go. So that's okay. Because what we can do is I can comment back and ask some questions. And then you can comment back to me and we can have some cycles. It's okay to badminton something over the fence a few times before you come to a conclusion and say, okay, this is what we really need. And maybe do that in a way that's asynchronous. that ⁓ is a little less invasive ⁓ and ⁓ allows people to work within the mental space. Because sometimes, I'll be honest, I show up to meetings and I just don't have the fucking mental capacity to think about ⁓ architecting some feature right now. My brain's somewhere else, or maybe I'm just tired. ⁓ I need to go take a nap, ⁓ and then at 2 o'clock in the morning, answer, ⁓ give you a bunch of questions and things, or point out some issues with something.

Yeah, I think what you're really picking on is like the umbrella of this is ⁓ asynchronous versus synchronous working and when is it appropriate to do which type. And meetings is a really good example of synchronous working, forcing synchronous thinking, forcing synchronous action. And in a lot of cases, that's just not necessary. And I would say 50 % or more of cases it's not necessary. ⁓ I'm guilty of it too, right? Like it's faster for me as someone that doesn't have to do all the work Behind the scenes that I'm requesting to be able to say like hey, is this a possibility? Can we do this? How about this? What about this and ping-pong ideas in that way? That's that's my preferred way of working it's not your preferred way of working because you're thinking through the details ⁓ of how do I actually go do that not just the ⁓ The what you're thinking of the how? Right. So I think there's that tricky balance between different brain types and, preferred working styles that you got to figure out. And I don't think we've perfected it by any stretch of the imagination, but we've gotten better.

No, we figured this out. We figured out one of the world's fundamental challenges. ⁓ And back when we had an office, we were all in the same office. We had the same challenge. We ⁓ looked for many solutions of ⁓ how we might be able to curb that. that's the. ⁓ the tapping you on the shoulder thing. It's the thing that like some people on our team really miss about the office and other people were like, yeah, I don't miss that shit at all. And like I'm one of those people, right? Because while like we used to sit next to each other. So ⁓ there are times where the work that I'm involved in, my brain is so deep in it and I'm holding the scope of, you know, these models and these controllers and like ⁓ what's happening and how this whole architecture exists. ⁓ And then someone's like, hey, I've got an idea about something. And you're like, poof, all of that's gone. And it took me a half hour to build that context tree and just understand what was going on. And now this 10 second conversation that allows you to move forward on something has just cost me all that time, plus the time I'm going to have to use to rebuild it again to move forward.

I remember ⁓ we explored multiple ideas on how to solve that too when we were in office. We explored like red light, green lights. If the light is red.

green lights, red headphones. Like, yeah, I mean, it was a real challenge. like, ultimately we wound up at like the kind of the general understanding of like, if somebody's got headphones on, maybe ping them in Slack before you go stand behind them. Because that's the other thing, right? Sometimes people will be like, well, I didn't say, I didn't tap you or whatever. Like, you stood next to my desk for 30 seconds. So eventually like, what?

Yep. Yep.

you

Yep. ⁓

Do you want? ⁓ And to be fair, we had an open office environment, right? This is one of the challenges with open offices is as much as it is collaborative and ⁓ neat and whatever, it's loud. It can be very invasive. ⁓ It does encourage that, ⁓ just tap you on the shoulder and be interruptive, which is really good for some types of working in some teams. ⁓ Creatives, it can be really good. But again, once I've hit a flow, we had a creative on our team, he's probably still one of the best creators I've ever worked with, that he was very diligent and very organized. And if he watches this, he'll know who he is. ⁓ And some people didn't like that. He was like, in the mornings I check Slack, I check email, and then I close that shit and I go to work. But. He was also the most productive person on our creative team. And I think that's where the challenge comes in. And that's the friction that kind of started the rant, right? was like, want ⁓ all of this really great thought and output in the results of the things. But I also want you to be available at a whim when I want you to be available. ⁓ For certain types of work, that is not possible. I can either do the work. Or can sit in your damn meeting. I can't do both. ⁓

Yeah. ⁓ And it is really challenging. And you know, the type of work for context for, for our listeners, the type of work we're talking about are strategy people, creative people, technology people, all trying to work together to create things on behalf of solving client problems. And there are certain work types that are just ⁓ more attuned to meetings. and certain work types that are more attuned to asynchronous, ⁓ please send me a Basecamp message and I'll get to it when I get to it. Or please submit a fizzy card and I'll get to it when I get to it type of environment.

Yep. And I think there are certainly things that you can use to curb this, right? Things that I've seen, some of them we do, right, ⁓ are implementing and making processes around using Fizzy and using Basecamp and using Cards. ⁓ those can be very effective and I think have been effective for us over time. I think there are others that we still haven't ⁓ necessarily explored ⁓ but have seen, right? One of the things that... ⁓ You know, I know that the folks over at 37signals use a lot and I've referenced a lot of their stuff because I've followed their things for a long time and they have some really ⁓ interesting ⁓ ideas and are willing to kind of take a different approach than most people are. ⁓ Like they have this idea of pitches and like we've talked about that internally. ⁓ You know, if you if you really want to see something flow like you should be able and willing to write like an actual pitch for it And if you're not willing to put in the effort Or able to articulate your idea well enough to peak my interest as a written pitch Why should I sit in a meeting and listen to you about it because it's probably a waste of time right So I think there are other sorts of things like that ⁓ that can exist, I also think that it frees up the opportunity for more ad hoc things. As much as I'm bitching about meetings and all that, one of the things I actually do ⁓ enjoy and appreciate are ⁓ just being able to have a quick huddle kind of thing. Where it's like, ⁓ don't need to have it, it doesn't need to be scheduled a week out, it doesn't need to be scheduled a day out. We can just kind of align and be like, hey, can we connect for like 10 minutes? ⁓ and like actually stay on there for 10 minutes, right? Not schedule a half hour and be like, we'll leave early. Nobody ever does. If it's on the schedule for a half hour, it burns a half hour. If it's on the schedule for an hour, everybody sits there for an hour. So like ⁓ having those quick cuddles to be like, hey, I I've looked through your thing. I understand 100 % of it-ish. ⁓ Here's my idea. How do you feel about that? And you get some quick reactions, you bat some stuff back and forth, and then you leave.

And you kind of like everybody progresses on and like that could happen two or three times a day and like that that right now ⁓ is as foreign ⁓ to our team I'll just use our team as an example. It's as foreign to our team as video calls were pre 2020

Yeah.

Do you think it's because ⁓ similar to going and standing ⁓ beside your desk, huddles are very interruptive or could be perceived as being interruptive versus meetings being planned and expected. ⁓ I ⁓ think I'm being more respectful of your time by scheduling a formal meeting than just doing a huddle.

I think so. And I think there's maybe some compounding issues with that. One, ⁓ the scheduled meeting, we all know, especially our ADHD friends, queuing is a problem. We get to the point where I have a meeting in a half hour. ⁓ It's not enough time to start anything. So now, not only am I burning the meeting time, I'm burning time before the meeting that I can't really fill with anything. and then there's the switching cost afterwards and that kind of stuff. So there's some aspect of that. Because meetings, ⁓ the days that I have certain days ⁓ that I've looked at that ⁓ I'll have meetings spaced exactly an hour apart. ⁓ And I just look at that day and go, well, I'm getting nothing done today. Because even though I have empty slots in my calendar, those empty slots are like, out of ⁓ a meeting. check in on something, go use the restroom, grab a drink, not enough time to do anything for the next meeting, dick around with some stuff for a little bit, join the next meeting, right? And you're in that back to back and God help you if any of run over. But I think there's also maybe this perception that if I call you, you have to answer the phone. And to a certain extent, it's like the phone, right? We've sat in meetings before where we're like, hey, where's so and so? I don't know they accepted the invite. ⁓ I sent him a slack I Will they're like the important person here. We need to get a hold of them Has anybody called him? I Just pick up the fucking phone and be like, yo, man. Where are you at? ⁓ right ⁓ That used to be normal and somehow it fell out of favor and like I think with huddles It's kind of the same thing right now at least where the perception internally is if I send you a huddle you have to answer And it's disruptive in nature And I think it's perfectly acceptable, and it should be acceptable. If I send you a huddle, you can ignore that shit and be like, hey, I'm tied up. I'll hit you back in like 30 minutes if that's cool. And then I'll try to call you back. And if you're available, great. If not, we'll figure that out. But this used to be normal. It used to be. ⁓

I call you, if you can't answer, you just send me a voicemail ⁓ and then you call me ⁓ and then maybe we do that a couple times. And then eventually we connect and the ⁓ problem is solved. Or we don't connect and it wasn't important enough for either of us. ⁓

So do you think it's ⁓ like text, text message culture has created some of this nightmare in some ways, right? We're talking about compounding issues. We're talking about meetings. We're talking about communication styles. We're talking about, ⁓ interruptive versus ⁓ non-interruptive sort of communication styles. ⁓ I kind of fall back to this thinking of, I think text messages ruined everything. The ability to send a text message. creates ⁓ an instant gratification loop. ⁓ When I send you a text message, or ⁓ the perception is when I send you a text message, you received it, I can see when you read it, in some cases, and because you read it, I expect a reply. Quickly, right?

I think that part of it's broken. I'll agree with you that think some of it is probably rooted in that. text messages in general can be very useful, can be very beneficial, because it's supposed to be an asynchronous form of communication. I have people that I work with on projects or just talk to around the entire globe. I'm a little bit nocturnal, so sometimes our ⁓ schedules overlap where they wouldn't ordinarily, but ⁓ it's very ordinary for me to wake up to a flurry of text messages and then just answer that flurry of text messages and not hear anything from somebody ⁓ or send a flurry of text messages in the evening and not hear anything until the next morning. And ⁓ I think you're right. think most people, when they send a text message, ⁓ they expect that it's like a phone call. I'm talking to you right now. And I think most people in the business world expect that of email. It's like one of the first things I tell people when I meet them in a business setting is like, hey, just so you know, I don't use email as instant messenger. My emails don't have any notifications. I check it.

Yes.

Maybe once a day Sometimes once every other day, right if I'm super busy, it's it's going to the next day So I check mail like I check a mailbox at my house ⁓

I was gonna say you check that about once a week, don't you?

I check that about once a month. But also, now I ship it to post scan mail. And so it just shows up in my email box. And I check it once every couple of days. ⁓ So all my physical mail shows up there. But yeah, I check email once a day, maybe twice a day at a max. But it is not instant messenger for me, because it's a distraction. And I found for years that if I ⁓

Mm.

you

Just focus on that. I'll spend all day answering emails and I've solved everybody else's problems, but I haven't done anything about mine

And I actually do think that that's a very big problem in corporate America. think we've experienced it even at Oodle in a lot of cases where communication ⁓ can feel like productivity. And in some cases it a hundred percent is, but in a lot of cases you can burn half your day just spinning on ideas and Slack sending asynchronous messages when a 10 minute huddle would have solved that entire flurry of activity. it's a tricky balance, right? So it's, it's the difference between Like when do I engage someone in a verbal conversation and when do we just go back and forth in written formats for forever? And I think the answer for me is when something needs to be well thought out and well understood for a go-do action, it needs to be in written form and it can be completely asynchronous. When something is extremely fuzzy, and I need a feedback loop, it could be asynchronous, but you have to ask the question of would it be faster to not be asynchronous? That's kind of my litmus test.

Yeah, I could buy into that. think, you know, and maybe those are the frustration points that I run into, right? A lot of times the things that I'm dealing with are like, ⁓ we need to go do something or this needs to be assigned to somebody to execute or whatever. So those are things that to me, they need to be written out. We need to know what the requirements are, like what's the acceptance criteria? What are we looking for? you know, do a sketch of it, something, to give some direction to somebody ⁓ versus kind of an abstract idea or an abstract problem, right? Specificity is incredibly important ⁓ in that world because you're asking somebody to go spend time doing it. And if we go invest time in the wrong direction, it's incredibly costly, not only in dollars, but in time, ⁓ in mental capacity, sanity, ⁓ right? ⁓ There are other times where you're thinking about an abstract idea or something that might be or whatever, and those are great times to hop in a meeting and just kind of like sit around, talk about things, add around ideas, think about stuff, experiment with something. And the net of it is you like of those is usually maybe we figured something out maybe we didn't and that's okay, right we just had like a ⁓ conversation about this or ⁓ whatever and we kind of know how to take this to the next step and it unlocks ⁓ some abilities to further define ⁓ what ultimately becomes a feature set or an ask or ⁓ requirement or a process change, whatever that thing is. ⁓ It's also, I think, important to capture and articulate the net of those things. A lot of times, ⁓ it's easy to forget to do that. And we're like, well, everybody was in the meeting. But ⁓ sometimes the people who are executing work are not the people who were in the meeting. They're not the people who architected it.

So capturing that architecture, even down to the things that you don't really think matter. I keep mentioning requirements and that kind of stuff. And in my head, I think about product requirements and those sorts of things. But sometimes even the whys are really important. What problem are we trying to solve? What's the pain point that we experienced? Why does this matter? Those can be as important as well, because it helps understand total impact. It also can call into question, I've had plenty of times where we have a perfectly architected saying we go to build it and as we're building it, you're kind of looking at that, you're kind of looking at the problem we're trying to solve. ⁓ This meets their spec, but it sucks. So then you change it. And what we get to deliver back is like, hey, we did this, that doesn't feel right. So it's tweaked to this way because this actually solves the problem better. But let me know if we want to go the other way. And nine times out of 10, it winds up being the enhanced version because you understood the problem. ⁓ Otherwise, you just wind up getting something back and they're like, I don't like this. ⁓ And ⁓ there's that clash of like, it meets the requirements. It doesn't matter. It still feels bad.

Yeah. ⁓ We're talking about meetings and different work styles and this kind of thing. I think an underrated ⁓ meeting type is one that I don't know of anyone else that does it except for us. ⁓ we, ⁓ so we're a fully remote company and as partners in the company, there's one day a week where we'll hop on a call for three or four hours, sometimes less. ⁓ And ⁓ we're not focused on doing anything deliberate. We're just treating it like we're sitting in the same room together, working on different things in some cases, but being able to bat around things that we need to just quickly talk about for five, 10 minutes. We wanted the next thing, check out for a little bit, work on our own things, check back together. ⁓ And we've done that for many, many years. ⁓ It's one of the most productive times for us to work on the business ⁓ together of our week. And obviously we all have, have our individual responsibilities and our go do stuff, but in terms of like moving the business forward and making micro decisions and adjustments and reviewing, you know, different pieces and parts and checking on goals and priorities. Like that's not a super structured meeting on purpose to be able to do that. And I think it's very underrated. think lots of team members, even in our, even an OODL could benefit from just ⁓ scheduling some time with people that they need to interact with in some way, or form, but in a loose way. to be able to be productive.

Yeah, we kind of treat that as like a almost like ⁓ an office hour session, right? ⁓ Where the three of us ⁓ are in the same ⁓ session, we might not even be working on the same thing, or might just be sitting around bullshitting for a little bit, right? But out of that bullshit comes some real shit, ⁓ where it's maybe a conversation that was had, or a challenge to tackle, or a ⁓ hair-brained idea that turns into something that's not so hair-brained. ⁓ You know, I think that time gives us that space. also, it's kind of a defined chunk. It's placed strategically to not be disruptive to everything else. And I think in large part, we've kind of treated that as sort of like a sacred ritual, like some of the other rituals that we have where it's like, I'm going to sit there and, you know, if I've got other stuff I need to work on, sometimes I do. Generally speaking, we're not working on anything too intense. And it's definitely not a meeting that you can kind of ⁓ halfway be in, halfway be out, which isn't something that I agree with anyways. I have a very firm, if you're in a meeting, be in the meeting rule. ⁓ If you're in the meeting, you're either there or if you're going to sidebar and work on emails and do other things, don't be in the meeting. You're not adding any value. You're just taking up space.

Yeah, I think switching gears a little bit, there's still a misconception. And I think it started in the corporate world. I remember being one of these people in the corporate world, that the busier the calendar, the more productive you must be. And that's ⁓ actually counterintuitive. The busier the calendar, the more stuff you talked about, but the less stuff you probably actually did.

Yeah, I mean it's the the illusion of the illusion of productivity, right? It's like how much stuff can you cram on your calendar? How busy can you appear? ⁓ but when you step back at it you look at the whole of it like It's you know, we've talked about a lot of stuff. We didn't actually do anything. We talked about a lot ⁓ I'm like the opposite right? I would I would rather produce a bunch of stuff and talk about nothing or talk very little ⁓ ⁓ and keep that relegated to certain sessions where like I know that's the intent. The intent is like, like I never walk away from our meetings that you John and I have disappointed because I have an expectation going in, right? There's no agenda, there's no action items, there's no, ⁓ anything that you would expect from an executive level meeting does not exist there. So ⁓ I walk away feeling like we did exactly what we set out to do ⁓ every week.

And, and like for those that haven't experienced a meeting like that, ⁓ it, seems chaotic and unproductive, but it actually turns into something that's incredibly productive because you have, you have things that you loosely hit on week over week. You talk about budgets, you talk about how we're trending financially. You talk about how the sales pipeline looks. You talk about any problems that you might have. Those things happen kind of organically. ⁓ over a period of time when you're working with people, so they don't even have to be listed on an agenda. We're going to talk about those things, and they're going to be small pieces of our conversation. The bigger pieces of our conversation, often we go down to rabbit holes. ⁓ sometimes the rabbit holes are like, huh, I wonder if there's a different way for us to visualize some of our business statistics. Or I wonder if there's a different way. Or it's a, ⁓ our software thing ⁓ renewal came due. Do you think we should renew it or do you think we should explore other things? I know, maybe we should build our own. ⁓ stuff like that end up spiraling into things that are fundamental changes to the business, but they weren't structured that way. We didn't on purpose set out to make those decisions. They happened organically.

Yeah, think, ⁓ you know, do you think it's something that other people could could do? Or do you think it's a I don't know the answer to this. I just kind of popped in my head. ⁓ Do you think it's something that other people could do? Or do you think ⁓ it ⁓ is ⁓ the result of kind of our unique situation, right? Our unique situation being. We're we're three incredibly close individuals, both personally and professionally. We've worked together for 16 years. ⁓ We've faced incredible highs and incredible lows. ⁓ We've faced challenges together. Because as I look back, I can remember times when those were structured, and we felt the need to have that structure. And for whatever reason, just over time, we've shed all of that. And sometimes we felt bad about that, and we need to put some more structure back, and ⁓ whatever. ⁓ And at some point it just kind of like clicked. And we're like, you know what? ⁓ No. The unstructured nature of this is the superpower. That's what makes this powerful. ⁓ And I believe that that's the case. The question is, is that replicable? Or is that something that's unique to ⁓ all of the things and the intangibles of what makes our partnership our partnership?

It's a fair question. And I think it's ⁓ the answer is ⁓ maybe. I think it's, think there are unique things about our, our situation that make an unstructured meeting like that incredibly powerful, making it, making it a superpower of how we operate the business. I think there are ways you can replicate that amongst teams. ⁓ So teams ⁓ that, and you know, you can see it amongst some of our team members even now where they have like a weekly team meeting and they do this. sort of kind of in the same way that we're doing it. And when we had an office, I can remember it was the meeting after the meeting. So like you would have that same team meeting, but then you would just, if the conference room wasn't booked, you would just kind of hang out in there and camp for a while together. And that's where some of the best ideas always came from was in the conversations that happen when we're working on separate stuff, we're in proximity. So I can hear what you're doing. We're, know, you can talk to me, I can talk to you. I'm not looking over your shoulder. We're not working on anything together. But it's like just this happenstance conversation that happens. And if you, if you allow that sort of space ⁓ between ⁓ meetings and you're in the meeting structure, quote unquote, isn't only about the one thing, but ⁓ it's a time that can be flexible and solve specific things. Then I think you can ⁓ not fully replicate, but you can get closer to that idea of proximity ⁓ of, of being able to brainstorm with someone that's in the same room as you.

What are there some way to make that like a?

a more intentional thing or just like a more normal thing, right? I think about like, there are a couple individuals on our team that ⁓ I tend to have ⁓ that with often because we will just hang like when a meeting ends, as long as it's not being transcribed ⁓ or we'll ⁓ stop the transcription usually. ⁓ We'll just kind of hang out, right? Like, and sometimes it happens because can't find the damn window. ⁓ Sometimes I'll just hang there if I don't have anything to do next or whatever. I'll just hang back, see if anybody else does. And ⁓ maybe you hang out there for 10, 15 minutes and just kind of chat about some stuff. Maybe ⁓ you're ⁓ just checking in on some things. Maybe you dive into something ⁓ pretty deep. Jake and I have had plenty of times where our meeting is over. ⁓ And ⁓ then it's six o'clock and his wife is yelling at him to come eat dinner. And I'm like, ⁓ shit, yeah, I need to go too. ⁓ So ⁓ and it, you know, we're both working on different things during that time. ⁓ We just also are batting around like, you know, have you have you tried this or what's going on with this or, you know, how so and so doing or, you know.

I have a theory. ⁓ think...

You and I tend to do it a lot too when like we're in meetings, we'll ⁓ wind up hanging back after a meeting and maybe connect for five or 10 minutes, ⁓ recap on the meeting, talk about the next thing, talk about something else going on. ⁓

Here's my theory. In a ⁓ physical office setting, I think it's more natural for people to do this because it's something that's been done for ever. In a fully remote setting, my theory is that if you come from a video game culture, specifically use of Discord or something like it, you are much more apt to behave in that way because that's by nature how that product is designed. ⁓ It's an unstructured, just conversational thing with not a start time, no start time, no end time. It's just hanging out. And when you're done hanging out, you leave, right? That's how it works. If you don't come from that.

I with the remote world, people are tending to pack their schedules more. Because you can bop from one meeting to the next. I used to have, I still do, to be clear, and people still put shit on my calendar anyways, but I always had a half hour minimum rule. You're not allowed to book me back to back. I need space for a meeting to go over. I want to be able to go. decompress, grab a drink, use the restroom. I don't wanna be running from meeting to meeting. ⁓ And in a remote world, it feels easier to just like, you know, can bop from meeting to meeting and like, that was touted as a strength for a while. And I think it's actually a weakness because it removes any excess space for that, right? Any potential to grab a quick discussion, any potential to just, or even just like potential to decompress. ⁓ Like, let me finish what we were just talking about, reset my brain, take care of my own faculties, and then hop into something else ready to go. Instead, you show up to a meeting dehydrated, hungry, and still thinking about the thing that you were just working on, trying to shift gears immediately into something else. So you're like 50 % there at best.

Yeah, I think. I get these emails sometimes from, from business people giving advice on how to structure days and whatever. And there are lots of different people that'll say like, well, you should put all of your major tasks and block time and windows on your calendar. And there other people that say you should leave your day fully unstructured and just write down the top three things for the week that you're trying to get done. I find that's actually the way that I work best is I don't try to plop a bunch of stuff in my calendar for quote unquote, focus time that I'm working on a specific thing because like, Sometimes I need room to breathe and in braining that thing is not it's not going to work at that point in time. So rather than trying to move that ⁓ box time around, like ⁓ way I work best is I have a list of three to five things in any given week that have to get done. Those are my must do's. And then if anything else happens, great. I always get more than three to five things done in a given week. But those are my non-negotiables. I have to get those done and it probably won't happen in one day. I need multiple days on each one of these things to be able to get them to a place where I feel good about them. ⁓ And ⁓ that's a way to, ⁓ I've found that is a great way to structure your week and make sure that you're productive and make sure that the things that are most important don't get sucked up by meetings as to your point. ⁓ I'm gonna skip your meeting to get my thing done. ⁓

Yep. ⁓ mean, ⁓ as digital of person as I am, everything I have is connected to something. ⁓ I maintain a paper list that sits on my desk. And ⁓ this is my actual to-do list. This is what ⁓ needs to get done. So it's going to get done.

Mine's on Post-it notes, but same idea.

Everything else that's in you know, if it's in base camp or fizzy or anything else due dates are optional If it's important enough, i'll write it down here on the day that I need to do it otherwise ⁓

Yep.

I'm sure if any of our PMs ever watch this, A, be like, yep, and B, like you motherfucker. Like, yeah, you're due date, whatever. It'll be fine. yeah, I mean, I think that's important too, just like having those, having that clarity and not necessarily filling up with like, I need to do all of these things. I usually only have a few.

Thank ⁓

and then just let everything else happen kind of organically. ⁓

And I think that probably changes a little bit depending on where you are and what level you are in an organization, right? So when I'm talking about three to five things, these are typically things that are pretty big, right? They're, they're decisions that have to be made or they're.

Yes. ⁓

It's not like schedule a flight for ⁓ Whatever ⁓ it's a Something a little more difficult than that

⁓ Right.

Yeah, but I do think generally speaking, there's merit in figuring out how to make your calendar as clean as possible. And that could be by putting work chunks out there if that works for you, or that could be just, it's fine to see open space in your calendar. That's actually a great thing because that gives you plenty of room to breathe and go do work, not meet all the time. Just because you're in a meeting and feeling needed because you're in the meeting ⁓ does not equal productivity.

So how do we ⁓ land this plane? It started as, know, we were gonna record a podcast and then started ⁓ ranting and talking about things and just kind of hit the record button. So ⁓ how do we sum up what we've been talking about in kind of a profound way?

I was trying to think of like what the title of this episode is gonna be. And for me, kind of boils down to like, meetings suck, but they could suck less.

Yeah, ⁓ I guess that's good. ⁓ So, you know, kind of wrapping it up a little bow on it. You know, we've we've explored what ⁓ the challenges that meetings have, the benefits that they bring, the ⁓ the changes and shifts we've seen over time as remote culture takes ⁓ takes hold, ⁓ how we might be able to learn from the old days. ⁓

So I an underrated meeting types that don't get a lot of airtime.

Yeah. ⁓

I mean, the only thing we haven't talked about is our level 10 meetings, ⁓ but that's about ⁓ the only meeting that we haven't meeting to death.

Well, I mean, we actually just didn't hit on it. We, we attempted to introduce level 10 meetings for the entire organization to mixed success levels. A level 10 meeting ⁓ is a meeting structure that is designed to be ⁓ the most productive way that you can run a meeting. The idea is that your first five minutes is a transition and you're kind of just talking about random stuff. And then you have 10 minutes that you're talking about KPIs and you have 10 minutes where you're talking about action items and to do's and then the entire rest of the meeting, however long you have left, is to discuss issues. And those issues, quote unquote, are really just items that may not have a defined agenda associated with them, but are things that need to be batted around. And we've treated ⁓ our executive team meetings for level 10 meetings with a lot of success because by nature, those meetings are a little fuzzy. So you go through the structured part upfront and then you go through the fuzzy part where it's like, hey, I have a problem and I need big brains to help me solve this problem. What do you guys think? ⁓ And ⁓ you're supposed to only spend five minutes per issue on purpose ⁓ and spending five minutes per issue time boxes it. And if it has to go any longer than that, then you schedule a follow-up conversation or an action item to go do something with that thing. Incredibly structured way to run meetings. I stand by it. What we found in introducing that to other areas of the team is mixed results. When you get to the issue section, it gets very, very tactical, very, very fast. And so ⁓ trying to manage those things ⁓ in the same way that you do an executive meeting just doesn't quite hit. ⁓ So, know, level 10 meetings, definitely recommend. Probably not for every ⁓ area in the organization though.

So thank you all for joining my therapy session today and talking about meetings and my disdain for them. Until next time.