indexed

Agree 100%. Meetings decrease productivity every time.

I disagree a bit. With extremely few meetings, teams don't know what goals they are working toward, and what they are suppose to be doing.

Instead, I would have a sharp rise on the left side of the graph, showing that too few meetings doesn't allow for high degrees of productivity.

As the guys from 37signals said long ago: Meetings are toxic

Jacob beat me to my point.

"I disagree a bit. With extremely few meetings, teams don't know what goals they are working toward, and what they are suppose to be doing."

I can hear your co-workers rolling their eyes, Jacob.

Yours, too, cache.

Nah, it should be a skewed bell curve.

Without any meeting at all, nothing can be coordinated. Depending on the nature of the project, at least one followup is usually necessary as well.

Shouldn't the line extend right through the x-axis? Enough meetings and you can actually get negative work done.

Meetings: a creative alternative to work.

That's why guys like me can make so much money teaching people to shut up. The graph probably should reflect lenght of meetings - 4 minutes good, 2 hours abysmal.

Our company has substituted meetings with orgies. We're in condom testing, so our productivity has increased greatly.

It sounds like an urban legend, but one of my coworkers was complaining to our boss one day about the fact that he had 39 hours of meetings scheduled for the week which left only 1 hour to do work. Our boss scheduled a 1 hour meeting to discuss the problem.

While I think a highly (and I mean highly) positively-skewed standard distribution probably better represents this idea, I have to agree. ESPECIALLY in academia. Oh, the headaches I've endured at the expense of reputation of dedication among colleagues :S

These comments sound like my last meeting.

Meetings are the cornerstone of my company. How would we ever figure out our average office Wii-Bowling score without them? And who's gonna buy me lunch?

Yes, yes we all know... But as long as there are meetings there will be projects, and projects are what makes most of us tick... As long as they are functional and to the point...

Dilbert would be proud of this post.

Amen sister. This has been my life lately.

Most technical folks consider the time spent at their desk working, and the time spent in meetings wasted. Higher up the chain, your responsibilities are less technical and more social (organizing, mediating, negotiating), and that perception is reversed (you work in meetings and waste time at your desk).

I'm thinking you might be following me around or something.

I've emailed this to my boss and he replied back with a diagram, in which the word "meetings" was replaced with "emails sent".

That is so true as well.

I have never been to a meeting that seemed productive. How unfortunate. Often they seem to leave some with emotioanal baggage and others with egos so undeserving inflated to bursting. Lucky for me meetings have been less common than for others. I would change careers to avoid a meeting filled day.

i may have responded to late to have an impact, but i would like to know how "anonymous" can "hear" eyes rolling. quite a talent!

i know, i know. I'm nitpicking.

it's funny that we're all discussing productivity, but we're also probably all reading this blog at work.

Jason - "It sounds like an urban legend, but one of my coworkers was complaining to our boss one day about the fact that he had 39 hours of meetings scheduled for the week which left only 1 hour to do work. Our boss scheduled a 1 hour meeting to discuss the problem."

My old boss would have said that only 39 hours of meetings left us with 129 hours to work.

Does this card come in T-shirt form? I need a large.

Bret, there is a solution to your "I-want-this-as-a-shirt" ... and it's simply some 'rub-a-dub' washable permanent marker. Perhaps with a little '©' and perhaps a website citation, but your cleverness would be the hit of the office-realm, I'm sure.

i'm printing this out and sticking it on the wall to the right side of my desk.