Do you think meetings take away most of your productive time?

Yes, I schedule a call-free day every week and reduce the number of meetings I have to take on towards the end of the week to avoid burn out.

Ideally meetings should make work better, not worse. They are annoying yes, but if you have 10 meetings with prospects they are a way to advance your company. same goes for collaboration meetings, ideally they happen because they are needed to move things forward, and not because it's just a weekly at a random time for some illusion of control (I've seen, you've seen it, we've all seen it ;P )

Certainly, it does! I'm striving to prevent such issues by maintaining synchronization through text messages amongst team members.

Does a bear poop in the woods? Of course meetings take away from my productivity. I'm starting to think remote work just means more meetings in your pajamas🤷‍♀️

I've been part of two startups in the last year and well, the culture of useless meetings was completely not present. The few meetings I did were super productive and gives you deep insights on the direction and work to do. SO I am biased as I know it's super frustrating to stop from your flow to answer something specific.

Yes! most meetings can be a well-crafted mail/message.

It depends! Some meetings are extremely helpful in answering questions and getting clear, instant feedback or directions. Sometimes Slack just can't sub a meeting!

Yes. Mostly because everyone's always too polite to stop the meeting even when it's no longer serving them just because they've scheduled it for a particular time (e.g. 45minutes)

Yes sometimes they can. I think with the right communication tools like zapmail, we can reduce the need for meetings and focus on getting work done.

At the moment not. And do you really think if we work at the office we have less meetings? This is not my experience so far...

I think as long as the agenda is clear prior to the start of the meeting, and it runs to schedule and is succinct, meetings can actually bolster productivity. I also like the opportunity to get together with the team. Face to Face meetings for me work so much better.

I guess the art lies in curating meetings that are more espresso shot - quick, strong, and invigorating, rather than a slow-brewing pot of decaf.

If there are too many meetings in a place, then no work is getting done. I believe this and experienced this.

Meetings that are intentional do not take away from productive time. In this era where remote work is the norm, sometimes things are better discussed in a short call vs a series of back and forth chats or emails. However, some people think that having more meetings to align is helpful and this is when it becomes draining. That is why, it is best to come prepared with an agenda and CTA from the audience. Provide necessary context and pre-read to make it more efficient. In my experience, combination of a-sync pre-read and short alignment works best.