Making it worse / making it better

As more of our days are spent in online meetings, many of our bad meeting behaviours haven’t changed: they’ve transferred online... and likely gotten worse.

Meeting tips and advice often focus on the agenda: have an agenda and send it out before the meeting.

But the agenda is only the ‘what’ to be done. And the agenda is not usually the problem with bad meetings. It’s about the process.

Most meetings follow dull default processes:

- One person talks. Another talks. We vote

- Two people talk and assume everyone agrees

- One person talks. Everyone agrees so we can finish.

The problems are many: low engagement/buy in, less contribution, participation and performance, more invisibility, boredom, distraction, exclusion. If the agenda is the what, the process... is the ‘how’.

Meetings are made better when you improve the process of how you run the meeting. A better process that is run by the leader of the meeting.

To facilitate better meetings is a skill. And to facilitate better meetings online, another skill.

Progress, outcomes and people suffer because bad meetings are made worse when we flip them as-is to online. Better meeting experiences are possible. 

Work ... and then release

Put yourself under some pressure, focus on the thing to be done ... work.

Focus so you have no other distractions.

Focus because it’s not forever. (You will get a break.)

Focus because it’s so effective in getting the thing done.

Better than advancing on six different tasks, inching forward on each one, our mind switching erratically, losing time to get back up to speed. It’s such a waste to persist with this old way of thinking and working. Is it connected with the beliefs, ‘If I work hard and long: - I’ll get the results - I’ll look busy, be seen as indispensable - I’ll be seen as dedicated?

But what about the outcome? What is being achieved? How long is it taking? And do you know?

Try pressure (focus) ... and then release (break). Set a time to focus on a task and only that task. This is the pressure or constraint. Then work. . . . And then release. Walk, stretch, get a drink, move yourself, do something else. Avoid the ‘mixing-it-all-up-into-one-big-day-of-endless-work.’

Pressure. And release. You’ll feel better, work better and do better. 

Taming distraction

Not every plan goes to plan. Inspiration may not show up when we’d like it to. Getting into a ‘flow’ with our work can be impossible at times.

Distractions are everywhere.

⏺ Internal distractions happen when our day-dreaming, mind-wandering brain looks for a release of pressure.

⏺ External distractions are bright shiny anythings promising rewards: people, screens, programs, food, random tasks.

One of the best ways to deal with distractions - internal and external - is to trick ourselves by following a system or process to keep us on track.

A hack for our mind.

Whether it’s a timebox, a task sliced from a bigger piece of work, a creative constraint or a gamed activity - we now know there are things we can do to make work easier, more focused and more productive for us ... even when times are tough.

Thinking a to do list will still do is an old way of thinking and working.

To do lists have evolved - and no, not just to a tech version in an app! How we prepare to do the work has changed. There are new and better ways of thinking and working available to us.

These ways are used by some, unknown to many yet available to us all. We are in an era where how we work is ripe for the hacking. 

Half speed

If you’ve felt busy anxious overwhelmed worried or hyper ... you might be running at twice the speed.

Thinking at 2x

Speaking at 2x

Walking and talking at 2x

Jumping to conclusions at 2x

Interrupting quicker than normal

Getting frustrated sooner than usual

Losing patience quicker than usual.

If and when we experience any of these ‘faster than our normal’ responses or reactions, it’s a great opportunity to take a speed check.

Rather than thinking ‘Oh I need to slow down’, try thinking ‘half speed’.

Half speed.

Half of the current crazy speed of thinking working talking juggling leaping and reacting. At half speed we begin to notice more, we’re tuned in to other people better and things can become clearer for us. It might not *really* be half speed, but it’s an easier mark to reach for.

Is this a new way of thinking for you? Rather than staying busy frantic and overwhelmed, it’s worth slowing down when other things seem to start going faster.

Could you make it easier

Is this a question you routinely ask about what you’re working on? How can we do this easier, make it easier, get it done with less resistance, obstacles, blocks, twists and knots?

Most things we’re working on really don’t need to be this hard, but we make them so. We can be distracted, lured and drawn in by others to add more and more, trying to do more and more or talking about more and more.

Because something is challenging doesn’t mean it’s worthy or good. So don’t be one of those people who when they speak, seem to make things more detailed or more confusing.

Life’s tricky enough without making stuff harder.

No silly time-wasting, power-playing games needed. Progress is the prize and reward. Help people work out what’s going on, what needs to be done and then get on and do it.