This post gives me pause. Meetings, the infernal overwrought obsession of our lives. It’s not just corporate America, but the various groups and org’s I’ve dallied with over the years suffer from meetopia, too. No one I know likes the blasted things, yet I don’t know anyone offering up a successful resistance.
Related to this, methinks, I have noted that I do a great deal over my workdays (check off a ridiculous number of to-dos) and accomplish little or nothing. The mass of tasks don’t roll up to anything. And I’ve noticed a lingering sense of frustration lately. I spend precious little time reflecting on my goals, and how I can link them to what I do over the course of any given day. I’m so divorced from this, I really wonder what I really want to do, to accomplish any more.
Within a recess of my brain comes a niggling thought. Perhaps this passion for meetings offers up a substitute for reflection. Knowing that we must account, personally, face-to-face for our “deliverables” provides some external discipline. It seems we are madly replacing any semblance of reflection with meetings. Who has time for planning and reflection; we have too many meetings; mad, demented cycle. Can you resist?