Productivity in a Useless Meeting
Almost every day I find myself in a meeting that I deem to the useless. These meetings tend to be useless due to a lack of planning, agenda, purpose and most importantly a topic that I care about. While in those meetings I have come up with a list of things that you can do to pass the time. Give one a try and post your stories.
Doodle - This is a classic, you can doodle any where but in a meeting is especially fruitful. You can doodle pictures of your coworkers or perhaps funny pictures of the management. Be sure to make your doodling look like you are writing something very important down in your notebook.
Make a list of things to do during a useless meeting - Like I did here you to can make a list of this to do in a meeting. Try to think of new discreet things that will not catch to bosses attention. If you think of any new ones make sure to come back and post them.
Whisper to a coworker comments about the meeting - Be careful! This one can get you in trouble. Like in high school you can be called upon to repeat your comment to the entire group. Sometimes this can be embarrassing.
Update your TODO list - this can be a very productive use of your time during a meeting. You have to be prepared with you TODO list before going into the meeting. I do this often and it is a great way to re-center on the things that you are working on.
Try to push the meeting off track - Now this is a bit counter productive but sometimes fun. When I was in high school we had a U.S. history teacher that would always get off track, my friend and I made it a contest between us to see how quickly we could get him talking about DeMonte Green Beans. Our record was less than 10 seconds! Find a coworker and start a competition.
Eat - You could eat the meal that you are missing to be in the meeting be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. This sometimes offends people because you are eating and they are hungry, don’t worry, that is there problem.
Plan you next vacation - If you have the ability to bring laptops to the meeting you could always start to plan your next vacation or research about your dream trip to Europe. Anything is possible if you are allowed to bring a computer to the meeting. You can research anything, or even read this Blog!
Spin in your chair - This one is for me, I often spin in my chair to have something fun to do.
Give these and try and I would love to hear your comments.
