Meetings are Not a Waste of Time

Let me caveat that title before I start, of course, they can be, but I’ve been thinking about meetings recently, specifically how we think of them solely as “time”.

Some meetings are considered a waste of time, or we don’t have them because we don’t want to waste people’s time, we think a last-minute cancellation is a gift of time, or we end a meeting early and present this as giving people time back.

All super, but I’ve been thinking that time isn’t the main investment in a meeting; it’s emotional or intellectual energy.

Maybe it’s because I am an introvert, but when a meeting appears on my calendar, it immediately siphons off a little of that energy. I’m thinking about it, especially if it needs prep, travel, or there's a risk of me making a cock of myself.

It could be two weeks away, but the emotional cogs are a whirring, sometimes, to be honest, at 4am when cogs really shouldn’t be whirring at all.

Time spent in a meeting is gone regardless. You'll never get it back. It’s lost.

And I guess that’s true of emotional and intellectual energy spent, there is a difference - yes, a bad meeting will drain more of that energy store, but a positive meeting will top it up, and you get the energy back.

Once during a Myers-Briggs test, the practitioner said yes, I am an introvert, but 'I get my energy from people” which sounds a bit fucked up to me. However, I can feel drained before the meeting kicks off and, if it’s a good meeting, energized at the end, wondering what all the fuss was about.

And I can’t decide whether that cognitive load is reduced when it’s virtual, since there’s no travel, fewer decisions, and a more managed environment, or if it's actually heightened, as virtual meetings tend to be more intense, we have the tech anxiety, there’s less social easing into it fluffing around the water cooler or coffee machine and a quicker entry into the meat of the topic at hand.

I know this is my personal experience, a survey size of one, and honestly, I was not sure where this idea would lead, but is a last-minute cancellation really a gift?

Yes, we get back the time, but the energy was already spent in anticipation. The meeting happened in my head at 4am, regardless.

So the real ask isn't fewer meetings; it's intentional ones where the energy exchange is worth it.

Meetings are not always a waste of time, but no meeting can be a waste of energy.