I hate all kinds of work meetings: status meetings, company meetings, team meetings and last but not the least call-in meetings. Here is why:
Every meeting invites a person who loves to talk. This person loves to state the obvious and explain things that are painfully simple and common sense. In other words he is extremely self important and believes that all other employees are a bunch of idiots. Annoying to say the least.And while this self-adulatory dumb-ass is droning on and on about how we should email the project numbers to only the important managers for the thirteenth time, I am trying so hard to stay awake and not fall off the chair. I am a border-line insomniac and barely have 4 hour sleep each night and unless I am constantly doing something, I get phenomenally drowsy. In meetings, this problem seems to become even more pronounced, no thanks to the dumb-ass.To keep myself from falling of the chair, I habitually doodle, a lot. I have been doing this since 12th grade. Once, my project manager actually caught hold of my notepad and burst out laughing since it had my and my significant other's name scribbled all over the page encircled with daisies and triangles. Trust me I am never that in love, but my mind is empty and it has to doodle. Needless to say this incident was highly embarrassing and now during meetings along with the fight to stay awake I also need to focus on not doodling.I also doodle when deep in thought.Doodling and sleepiness can make people think I am not interested in the meeting. This may be true but they don't have to know this. So now I have to do the occasional nodding and note-taking. This problem leads to two more problems:Since I have been caught nodding at things I should not be nodding at quite a few times, I now have to actually make an effort to listen to the conversation. Ughhh how boring is that.
Note-taking is so over-rated in meetings so much so that managers seem to think that it helps them distinguish between the good and the bad employees. My problem is that although my ear/brain-registering combination is pretty good but add in the third loop of note-taking to the process and I fall apart. I retain so much more when just listening, but force me into taking notes and all meeting-related details get fuzzy. Nothing in brain, nothing on paper (minus doodles).This leads me to look bad as compared to employees who send meeting agendas pre-meeting and MOM 10 mins post-meeting. I hate show-offs.On top of this, during the meeting I constantly feel the pressure to participate and speak up . I know one should only say something which is worth for others to hear, but what if the whole meeting passes by and you have nothing intelligent to say. I don't want people (read my manager) to think I wasn't into the meeting. Should I , at this stage, take after the compulsive-self important-talker and start reiterating everything said in the meeting. Usually I resist the urge to just participate for the heck of, which is a struggle in itself. This urge to speak up triples during call-in meetings for obvious reasons. I don't want people to think that they were on mute while i was busy chatting or surfing the net.So by now, I am trying to stay awake, look interested, not doodle, stay on my chair, listen to the conversation, nod, take coherent notes and try to think of something intelligent to say while struggling to keep my mouth shut until I do. Sounds exhausting doesn't it? Well I am...exhausted that is. And I would not mind it one bit if I was never invited to a meeting again ever ( not at the expense of being jobless/homeless of course).
Every meeting invites a person who loves to talk. This person loves to state the obvious and explain things that are painfully simple and common sense. In other words he is extremely self important and believes that all other employees are a bunch of idiots. Annoying to say the least.And while this self-adulatory dumb-ass is droning on and on about how we should email the project numbers to only the important managers for the thirteenth time, I am trying so hard to stay awake and not fall off the chair. I am a border-line insomniac and barely have 4 hour sleep each night and unless I am constantly doing something, I get phenomenally drowsy. In meetings, this problem seems to become even more pronounced, no thanks to the dumb-ass.To keep myself from falling of the chair, I habitually doodle, a lot. I have been doing this since 12th grade. Once, my project manager actually caught hold of my notepad and burst out laughing since it had my and my significant other's name scribbled all over the page encircled with daisies and triangles. Trust me I am never that in love, but my mind is empty and it has to doodle. Needless to say this incident was highly embarrassing and now during meetings along with the fight to stay awake I also need to focus on not doodling.I also doodle when deep in thought.Doodling and sleepiness can make people think I am not interested in the meeting. This may be true but they don't have to know this. So now I have to do the occasional nodding and note-taking. This problem leads to two more problems:Since I have been caught nodding at things I should not be nodding at quite a few times, I now have to actually make an effort to listen to the conversation. Ughhh how boring is that.
Note-taking is so over-rated in meetings so much so that managers seem to think that it helps them distinguish between the good and the bad employees. My problem is that although my ear/brain-registering combination is pretty good but add in the third loop of note-taking to the process and I fall apart. I retain so much more when just listening, but force me into taking notes and all meeting-related details get fuzzy. Nothing in brain, nothing on paper (minus doodles).This leads me to look bad as compared to employees who send meeting agendas pre-meeting and MOM 10 mins post-meeting. I hate show-offs.On top of this, during the meeting I constantly feel the pressure to participate and speak up . I know one should only say something which is worth for others to hear, but what if the whole meeting passes by and you have nothing intelligent to say. I don't want people (read my manager) to think I wasn't into the meeting. Should I , at this stage, take after the compulsive-self important-talker and start reiterating everything said in the meeting. Usually I resist the urge to just participate for the heck of, which is a struggle in itself. This urge to speak up triples during call-in meetings for obvious reasons. I don't want people to think that they were on mute while i was busy chatting or surfing the net.So by now, I am trying to stay awake, look interested, not doodle, stay on my chair, listen to the conversation, nod, take coherent notes and try to think of something intelligent to say while struggling to keep my mouth shut until I do. Sounds exhausting doesn't it? Well I am...exhausted that is. And I would not mind it one bit if I was never invited to a meeting again ever ( not at the expense of being jobless/homeless of course).
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