Are Meetings Passé?

Meetings are a dying breed of face-to-face engagement that have taken on more angst, agony and abuse in recent years than even the lowly cubicle.

“There’s nothing more toxic to productivity than a meeting,” Jason Fried argues, author of the best-selling book, Rework, “They break your work day into small, incoherent pieces that disrupt your natural workflow. They often contain at least one moron that inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense… The goal is to avoid meetings. Every minute you avoid spending in a meeting is a minute you can get real work done instead.”

Did you get that? It is painstakingly difficult to form everyone around the table for a discussion. More than that, it’s unproductive. It’s time-consuming. It’s inefficient. Your co-workers are morons. Feelings could get hurt. Souls misunderstood. We should avoid each other at all costs. Don’t talk. Crouch and hide behind a monitor, like you learned to drop and roll for a fire.

Fried argues if you absolutely must hold a meeting, you should set up a timer and invite as few people as possible. Which really describes an industrial factory full of machines, not a cadre of smart people in a pioneering workplace, does it not?

More and more, solutions toward a better workplace include making sure we’re as far apart from each other as possible. Escapism is cloaked in flexible schedules, location-independence, and working from a coffee shop to the point of being revered; it’s okay that most people could never see another person and still do their job effectively.

We intentionally court the label of recluse as status symbol; evading a meeting is hip and progressive. Conversation is out.

A good deal of this obsession can be credited to our educational pedigree, where the American obsession with rote learning and standardized testing has married that old and outdated hag of work, the industrial model. Their child is the monstrosity of a workplace that we have today. Such systems, the trappings of knowledge and innovation, have actually killed creativity to the detriment of the current and future economy, and of course, our spirits.

We’re running away and far away in the wrong direction. Away from each other and towards nothing at all more grand, preferring the safety and fortitude of our screens more than the uncertainty and uncontrollability of real-life interactions.

Creativity once required a lone artist with his canvas or an eccentric inventor toiling away in his garage. But the new economy will increasingly require us to work together, to learn through the discovery of dialogue, the challenge of ideas and the experience of being in the same room – after all, the subtleties of a person’s mannerisms just don’t come through in a smiley face emoticon.

So maybe you could start a new kind of work revolution. One that doesn’t push away from each other but attracts us closer. Get up and talk. You know, within a physical distance that doesn’t require the use of email, text or gchat. Throw out your timer. Fight over something. Be interesting. Interrupt someone’s work.

Reach out and touch someone.

Work is the constant sifting and winnowing of how we make sense of the world. And real work can’t be done solely inside of a screen.

Speak Out.

Re-Thinking Workaholism

“Work is the only thing which makes life endurable to me,” Charles Darwin wrote, later remarking that work was his “sole enjoyment in life.” Darwin’s work allowed him to withdraw from the world to concentrate entirely on his genius.

Burying yourself in work is so ingrained and glorified in our culture to survive, that nowhere is safe, even the previously safe haunts of creativity where the tradition of daydreaming and an idle nature were once protected rights. Such inefficiencies are now subject to intense bright-lights examination.

One ad agency describes the process they went through to obtain ISO 5000, a certification previously reserved only for factory lines and manufacturing. The process revealed some “surprising inefficiencies” but came at a price. “All the hyper-efficiency can be exhausting,” reported the Chief Creative Officer Jeff Gabel. “You’ve removed your slop factor.”

Exhaustion is now the modus operandi. As such, workaholism is not a reaction to passion, but the inefficiencies of the modern workplace.

“The fact is,” Dave Balter, founder and CEO of BzzAgent, says, “few white-collar employees work 9-5 at all anymore. We’re expected to address work issues on weeknights and often on weekends. We’re constantly reachable and it goes without saying that many are reviewed on the merits of their ‘always on’ capacity.” (via Max Kalehoff).

Most of us are working the usual 9 to 5, but also when inspiration strikes. Whereas in the industrial revolution, work was indeed done when you completed your widgets for the day, the knowledge society demands your energy when it’s seemingly most inconvenient. Right before bed and long into the night, for instance, or first thing upon opening your eyes in the morning.

There’s a credible explanation for these 9 to 5 outliers, which is that the productivity pockets are cushioned by breaks – a tweet, sleep, dinner, interaction with friends and family. Such idleness is great sustenance.

Alain de Botton, best known for his philosophies on everyday life, agrees. There’s a glorious stubbornness to human nature, he says. We need a break, we need a pause, we’re not made for continuous action. Looking out the window is a fundamental part of human nature, he argues.

“Periodic breaks relieve our conscious minds of the pressure to perform — pressure that can lock us into a single mode of thinking,” argue the authors of Creativity and the Mind, a landmark text in the psychology and neuroscience of creativity. Their research suggests that regular breaks enhance problem-solving skills significantly, Wired reports.

We’re working all the time, not because we need to, or even because it’s effective, but because our jobs require us to show up, be seen, and scrub through the afternoon slump. But the truth is, no one is working at 3 pm. That should be nap time, argues De Botton. (Interestingly, those who nap have a higher capacity to learn).

The culture of workaholism, worn with a badge of narcissistic and perfectionist pride, isn’t mixed with a lot of real work, he says. In our squeeze for uber-efficiency, we’re making a giant mess of inefficiencies.

A recent Wall Street Journal post profiled a young “superhero” who “rises at 3:30 a.m., works out before work, takes three of his four kids to school, works flat-out all day, gets home for dinner and bedtime with the family and then works until midnight.”

If you were counting, the young superhero gets a whopping three and a half hours of sleep. Disgusting.

Workaholism is sick and it’s wrenching to watch the pedestal we build for it.

We are not drones,  and we should not  indenture ourselves to workaholic servitude. Our rhythms, what truly brings about the bliss of efficiency, require not the constant ticking of the clock, but a restful mind, a glance in the other direction, a check mark in a box that doesn’t exist on any spreadsheet.

That is, sometimes work needs a little life.

How To Fake Being Organized

Turn Here is a guest column on Wednesdays by Caitlin McCabe who blogs over at Smile Like You Mean It and is into architecture, social media, and irreverence.

I am not nor have I ever been an organized person. It’s not like I ever set out to simply ignore the rules of being organized….. it’s just not something that comes naturally to me. For example: remember “clean out your cubby day” when you were in 4th grade? That was my nightmare. I was the kid with 100,000 papers jammed into their cubby so that they had to start a “clean your cubby day” to get the kid to take it all home. I’m not proud of it, it just is.

The worst part is I don’t really want to be organized I just want it to be ok. I just want it to look like I am the type of person that doesn’t have 100,000 papers jammed somewhere.

Over the years I have learned enough tricks to seem like I’m organized enough that people actually tell me “you’re such an organized person” which makes me chuckle because it’s worked. I have enough tricks now to make it seem like I’m not the “clean out your cubby day” kid.

I’m not endorsing being unorganized but here are a few tips in a pinch.

1) Be on time. I can’t stress this enough. Being on time for a meeting sets the tone that people’s time is valuable and you respect that. My trick for this is to set every clock in my house and my car clock ahead at least 10 min. The person who is late always looks unorganized even if they aren’t. Forewarning: No one else in your household will enjoy the clock trick but you.

2) Send follow ups. People who send an email after a meeting with a client, interview, whatever will look well put together. Bonus points if you write the deliverables or next steps in the e-mail.

3) Carry your things in a nice folder. I like those folders that are leather and have pockets for business cards and a notebook. Don’t carry a junk notebook unless you take really good notes otherwise it will look sloppy. If you take few notes (I have a really good memory and I don’t take notes because I can’t pay attention and take notes) you’ll need something more professional.

4) Use Google calendar. I’m not a calendar person and have been beaten by so many calendars I’ve lost count. Not writing dates down means you’ll miss appointments so if you go into Google Calendar you can set up a million reminders for each appointment. I usually have at least 2 emails and 1 pop up and have managed to miss no calls or meetings in the last 6 months.

How to delegate for people who hate delegating

Turn Here is a guest column on Wednesdays by Caitlin McCabe who blogs over at Smile Like You Mean It and is into architecture, social media, and irreverence.

Something that not a lot of my online network knows is that I have fake nails.  Everyone in my face-to-face life has an opinion about it. For example, my mom hates them and tells me that it’s ridiculous.  My friend’s husband is enthralled with how much money I spend on them and lots of people think it’s wasteful and/or too much time to have them.  Some people like the fact that I paint them weird (I say stylish) colors.

Really, it’s none of those things.  Instead, my nails were lesson 1 for me in delegating.

Good grooming is important in business and so are your hands.   I hate the idea of presenting an idea with gross, chewed up nails so I started doing them myself.  Keeping up with this generally meant spending two hours each week and buying products.  When I had them professionally done, I only spent an hour every other week and $35.

Hi, my name is Caitlin and I have spent years learning to delegate.

That sentence has made me very, very busy throughout my life.  So busy that I’ve missed a lot of birthday parties, family brunches, movies, and get-togethers.  So busy that I’ve sometimes had a job title longer than I probably should have just because I was “way too busy” to take on any other responsibilities.  Being “super busy” doesn’t mean that you are really important or moving forward.  It just means that you might be halfway to work and realize that you forgot your laptop.  I have gotten to the office and realized that I forgot to put on a bra as a result of early morning conference calls and paperwork.

You are probably too busy too.

I know someone has written “the 4 hour workweek” but here’s the thing:  most of us are just trying not to go nuts with all of our to-do’s and maybe we need a baby step or two.  Also, there are people out there like me who just don’t really delegate well.  Here’s how you should start:

1) Realize that you are too busy. It’s possible you are too busy to move forward.  Once you admit that you are at capacity, you will be able to decide which things need to go.  So say it.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Ok, now you are ready to let someone else do something you were once doing, because you want to move forward right?

2) Start Small.  Delegate 1 thing.  For me, that one thing was the 2 hours I was spending doing my nails each week; there was just no way I was going to start with work delegation.   Pick out the thing that you spend 3 useless hours on a week that you can let someone else do.  Maybe it’s answering cold sales calls or explaining what your company does to people.  You might even be surprised, my nail people put my self-manicures to shame and once I calculated what I make an hour and apply it to the two hours I spent doing my nails, it’s less expensive to get them done.

3) Delegate beyond work.  Maybe you spend just the right amount of time on work and you can shift things in your personal life easily.  For example, could you join Peapod and stop grocery shopping?  Could you get a salon blowout and spend less time in the morning doing your hair?  Resist the urge to say that it’s more expensive because that’s assuming that your time is worth nothing which it isn’t.

4)  Pay someone.  This might make you feel better.  Simply asking someone else to take on more responsibility makes me cringe.  Why would someone do another job simply because I asked?  Even if I am their boss.  Create incentive.  Pay them or find some other reward to even the playing field.

The sort of sinister side to this is that if I pay someone or create a reward, I am far more justified in yelling at them if it’s not done or not done correctly.  I could have asked the New Jersey-ite to walk the dog every day, but since I don’t pay him I’d probably end up stuck with it occasionally and I couldn’t really yell at him.  So we hired a dog walker and spend a lot less time running home at noon to do it.

5) Don’t delegate jobs you love even if they are below you.  I will never delegate reading social media blogs.  Even if I am the most busy person in the universe.  My boss once tried to make me delegate advertising strategy sessions to someone else and I felt the bright spot going out of my day.  Don’t delegate things you love in order to move forward or you’ll regret it.

Once you start with small things, I promise it gets easier.

Purge first. Creativity second.

For creativity, you need to get rid of the crap. Your surroundings are a reflection of who you are, and the state of your environment is a reflection of the state of your mind.

I work best when everything is in its proper place. At this point, I should make a disclaimer. Everyone works differently. You might work well in crap. I cannot. The piles and dust and general disorder weigh on my mind. Like a big stinky dump truck with tin cans tied to the bumper that clang against the sides of my brain. No, I do not work well with disorder.

Chaos and confusion within your to-do list will also make a mess of your mind. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. Get it out of the way. Right now.

For me, it’s tough to deal with accounting-related tasks. Not only because I am so clearly a right-brained person, but because I’m also directly responsible for my own salary. It’s incredibly stressful. So I sub-consciously avoid the numbers game because it’s difficult and hard and sticky.

But it’s also incredibly important, so I push it to the forefront daily. After all, the show cannot go on without money, and I really love that thing called eating. So while I would really prefer to be brainstorming the next big idea, finishing the accounting makes me feel just as good, euphoric even.

Purging your to-do list of items that bring you anxiety means not only crossing off the difficult and boring tasks, but getting rid of the items that suck your energy.

For instance, I have a habit of adding unnecessary to-dos to my list. Items that are so ridiculously broad such as “recruitment,” or so entrenched in abbreviation like “LM to SC and in DB & Ltr” that I have no frickin’ clue what I’m supposed to be doing or where to start. Such items are now banned from my college-lined notebook. Don’t let them show up in yours. Sneaky rascals, those to-dos.

It’s kind of like the style shows where they embarrass people into dressing properly. The fashionable teach the outdated, passé, and defunct how to rid their closet of negative energy and bedazzaled Capri jeans. By doing so they make the simple act of getting dressed a retreat of confidence, coolness and beauty.

Now, just think if your to-do list were that sexy.

Face your work woes. Creativity will follow the work that you do and the risks you take.

Work woe no more.