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O P I N I O N
Death by meeting
We all know meetings are a necessary evil, but do we have to let them wreck our productivity?
D id you know that a typical American professional attends more than 60 meetings per month? That is more than two meetings per day. With that many meetings, and all the emails we find ourselves responding to, it’s a wonder we get any work done at all. To make matters worse, on average, 50 percent of the time spent in those meetings is waste! Researchers from Harvard Business School and Boston University surveyed 182 senior managers across industries, and 65 percent said that meetings prevent them from completing their work, and 71 percent found them to be unproductive and inefficient.
Chase Miller GUEST SPEAKER
Meetings have an adverse effect on productivity in a number of ways. Between the time spent in meetings, and working in a collaborative way outside of meetings, very little time is left to accomplish solo work. Many employees dedicate themselves to coming in early and staying late to get everything done, resulting in burnout. Furthermore, time in between meetings becomes unproductive. In an Ohio State University Fisher College of Business Study, researchers asked participants how long they could spend reading in the hour before a meeting for which they were fully prepared. Respondents said they had 50 minutes
available, but it felt like they only had 40 minutes. Participants were also told that they either had five minutes to kill or that they had five minutes to spare before an upcoming task or meeting. Those not reminded about the upcoming task/ meeting (five minutes to spare) carried out 30 percent more than those thinking about the upcoming task/meeting (five minutes to kill). It’s clear that the mere thought of an upcoming meeting makes us less productive with the time we have available. You may be thinking, “So, what! Meetings are a necessary evil of our industry.” That may be true,
See CHASE MILLER, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER February 18, 2019, ISSUE 1284
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