The Intermission

One of the many joys of having a digital TV recorder on my Mac (EyeTV Hybrid by Elgato) is that I can save the funniest commercials in addition to the best shows. Here’s one I like that aired during an episode of The Office. It’s from FedEx Kinkos.

Kinko’s Commercial

Yesterday included several nice pick-me-ups:

1. I finished my 6 month review at Bridge, and it went really well.
2. After a really, really long meeting (ending at 6:30 pm), I came back to my desk to find a voicemail from Chick-Fil-A. They drew my business card, which means my whole office will get free Chick-Fil-A sandwiches!
3. I play Jeopardy! via email with some friends from my last job. (One person has a Jeopardy! daily desk calendar and sends out the questions every day. You’re on your honor not to use Google.) This last week, I got every question right, including the Final Jeopardy, which means I won! (This does not happen very often.)
4. Sarah let me go out after work and buy some toys for my desk at work! I ended up with this sweet set of Magnetix (the smaller version of this set). It’s colorful and it spins, so it should keep my brain stimulated.

At Bridge, I work with a girl named Megan. Megan is great. She knows her stuff and cuts through other peoples’ crap really quickly. She also happens to be punctual, which causes her some frustration when other people arrive for meetings a little less promptly. So Megan did a little napkin math to figure out how much of her life she has spent waiting for meetings to begin…

So I have this bad habit of being on time to meetings. And I’d say in about 9 out of all 10 meetings I go to, I’m the first one there. And I usually spend 3-10 minutes sitting in the room by myself.

Sometimes I wander back to my desk, sometimes I go find the people I’ll be meeting with.

I probably have an average of about 10 meetings a week. Somedays WAY more and somedays WAY less… so lets do the math.

I’ve worked here for 46 months. = 184 weeks, minus vacation, so 176 weeks.

10 meetings a week = 1760 meetings.

5 minutes of my time wasted per meeting = 8,800 minutes wasted

8,800/1440 (Minutes in a day) = 6.1

I’ve wasted 6.1 DAYS of my life being early to meetings!

FULL DISCLOSURE: This should not, in any way, be read as a complaint against Bridge. Well, I can’t swear for Megan, but I know that I love working there. It’s a great company that works with fantastic clients. It’s also one of the best small companies to work for, according to the Great Places to Work Institute.

I find it interesting that many people clamor for shorter meetings or no meetings at all. To me, that pretty much makes no sense at all. Meetings are where all the best stuff happens. Admittedly, it’s also where the worst stuff happens… there will always be those hour long meetings where you have to attend just to contribute your 5 minutes worth of information. But then there are excellent meetings where great minds hash out important questions. I can’t imagine getting rid of those meetings and still getting anything done.

In the commentary for The Incredibles, someone (Brad Bird?) talks about how Pixar has an abnormal policy toward meetings… they like them! People get in these meetings and hash out all kinds of issues, then go back to work with a lot of creative clarity. Plenty of other bloggers and authors have given rules for facilitating meetings well, but I’m sure 60% of it has to do with the quality of the people in the room. If you get a bunch of smart people in a room, and keep them even somewhat on task, then good things will come out of it.

In contrast, I’m reminded of an old Dilbert comic that showed how managers were biologically well-suited for their jobs by virtue of having smaller brains and larger bladders, which allow them to survive long meetings. I wish I could find that comic for you, but Google does a poor job of searching the text inside of comics (or the books on my bookshelf, which is where I’m sure it is).