Not much time is lost by unproductivity this way. Also our meetings are only about an hour long (small company, less to jabber about).

I had a web client who dicked-me around, kept changing his mind and expecting me to implement his out-of-scope changes. I finally realized that was his game, so the next time he asked for work, I insisted on a written, signed specification.

He said, “I’ll *never* get a 100%-complete spec from him,” and “He’ll ‘humor’ me and sign the spec, but he has no intention of honoring it. What am I going to do, sue him?”

You can guess how much more work I did for him after I heard *that* gem. And *he* was pissed at *me*. Like a plumber or anyone else would put-up with that sh*t…

Anytime someone dares you to sue him, it’s time to decline the work…and put-out a contract on *him*. And I don’t mean for web-dev, either.

I like the idea of the standing meeting; thanks.

Its mostly the management rubbing their stuff in front of the doctors saying how great the clinic is doing, we spend 10 minutes on acknowledgments. (I want to acknowledge them with taste of my knuckles.)

20 minutes on “old bussiness or ‘tabled’ bussiness”
then if we get around to it, new business!!

Which in turn gets tabled, becasue well, there are patients waiting to be seen.

I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in the circle of defunct management. Why have a manager at all? Hire competent workers who don’t need to be baby sat, and have one lead for each ” division.” But well thats just my military side speaking.

We’d have 0700 muster, say what needed to be said in 15 minutes, then get our asses to work. Didn’t have time to stroke myself or my buddies with empty acknowledgments with 22 aircraft being shot off the flight deck before breakfast. And at least 30 crew members, sniffling, scratching or bleeding in my P-Way.

-Doc

Meetings, for the most part, interrupt work and do nothing more than decrease my productivity for the same reasons they do for a maker – especially the idea that if there is a meeting in the afternoon, I won’t embark on a complicated project in the morning. It is extremely rare that I leave a meeting feeling like:

a) anything was accomplished,
b) I have the energy to do anything productive,
or
c) I don’t want to drop kick the nearest person.

I think you could apply this difference as being between a “manager’s schedule” and “anyone who is not a manager’s schedule”.

Project management is the worst. They’re competent in what they’re managing (that’s why they’re there) but they’ve suddenly been handed a reason to justify their existence, which just winds up caught in the sprockets of actual stuff.

It’s been refined down to a science.

Before you scoff, it was actually pretty good. It had a 15 minute time limit, and was over sooner if there was nothing left to say. It only covered the topics that we were working on, so there wasn’t much of a context switch.

-Jeff

Any looming appointment, meeting, or any other obligation later in the day totally throws me off, almost invariably. I, too, end up doing most of my ‘making’ in the wee hours after all my commitments have been met, and when the only deadline is when my body finally gives up and succumbs to sleep. Not great for the constitution, but sometimes it’s the only way.

We must immediately commence work on the software needed to debit the life-accounts of time wasters. Let those meeting morons that trot out “just one more thing for the agenda” be made to PAY! Advanced actuarial science will permit the precise calculation of the span of any person and coupled with the aforementioned, make it possible to even the score. I suggest either a running account with sudden termination without warning when the balance becomes due, or an option of having one’s time shortened by scientifically applied physical trauma.

That’ll show the bastards.

I feel like I have been trying to explain this phenomenon to my mother for much of my life without knowing exactly what I was trying to say. Free days are not good times to schedule anything. Medical appointments, tea with the neighbors, a trip to the video store, whatever. Even if it lasts five minutes it can ruin a whole day’s worth of work.

Now I wish someone would please explain it to my college. A schedule that spreads classes out over every weekday may look easier, but it is remarkably less productive, and therefore actually more difficult.

But it is something you can do for a while – dont want to make it my life style concept though. i like to have meetings in the morning, then I usually get the most out of it and still have my day kind of free.

Thanks for the blogpost: It is nice to read what one actually is doing without realizing it ;-) . Eye opener!

Cheers, Deniz