The Definitive Guide To Wasting As Much Time As Humanly Possible In Meetings The Definitive Guide To Wasting As Much Time As Humanly Possible In Meetings

The Definitive Guide to Wasting as Much Time as Humanly Possible in Meetings

* Disclaimer: This is definitely not a guide on how to run efficient meetings. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own.

Dear coworkers, managers, and direct reports,

I am salty. The other day, I opened my calendar and found there to be simply too much empty space. What am I to do with all that extra time? Spend time actually focusing? Spend more time with friends and family? Unacceptable.

We all know someone who gets things done too efficiently. Why spend only 4 hours a day working when you could spend a whole 8 hours or more? Over the last 5+ years working as a software engineer, I’ve been taking notes from my most inefficient colleagues. By the end of this guide, you will be a meeting-scheduling wizard – a master of wasting time through an excessive number of prolonged, fruitless meetings.

Step 1: Schedule a Long Meeting, or Five

We don’t have enough meetings on our calendars. I want my day to be eight straight hours of back-to-back meetings. If there’s time for a bathroom break, you’re doing it wrong. When in doubt, schedule a meeting.

If the topic could be answered via an email or a message, schedule a meeting instead. Don’t waste your opportunity to drag a minutes-long interaction out by half an hour or more. If there’s only 30 minutes of actual content, make it 60 minutes. Monopolize everyone’s time, just in case.

We don’t want to encourage people to be concise or accidentally set a time limit. If you aren’t sure if the topic is important enough to require a meeting, err on the side of scheduling a meeting anyway.

Step 2: Invite Everyone and Their Neighbor

Be considerate of your teammates and make sure nobody misses the context. When in doubt, invite them all. The specific audience for this meeting should be everyone. We don’t want to make anyone feel left out. Make attendance required rather than optional so that people have no choice whether they attend the meeting or not.

Get good at basic math.

  • 30 minutes x 15 people = 450 total minutes = 7.5 hours wasted

What you have to say is incredibly important. More important than anything else anyone could be doing instead. Make sure everyone has the opportunity to be blessed by your genius.

Be 100% unintentional when adding people to meetings. Don’t put any thought into who actually needs to attend.

Step 3: Go into the Meeting with No Agenda

Agendas are too much work. Go into the meeting blind and just wing it. Let your creativity and sparks of innovation shine. Make sure you are totally unclear on the purpose of the meeting.

This lets you keep your options wide open, like that one guy who sort of tried to date me in high school. This way, you can use the meeting to do anything and everything. Even better if nobody knows who is even running it.

Wildly confuse your attendees by:

  • Asking random questions throughout the meeting as they come up. This is more comprehensive than a written list of questions.
  • Talking in circles because you decided not to organize your thoughts beforehand. This will allow you to sporadically repeat the same points throughout the meeting. For emphasis.
  • Waving your hands continuously to be super clear about the diagrams you didn’t include. Visual cues are key.
  • Not providing any documents that everyone could refer to or pre-read to save time.

Step 4: Let the Conversation Derail

If you got here, you probably executed Step 3 at least half-decently. Excellent job.

Next, let every discussion evolve into a sub-discussion. Even better if these end up involving only two people in the meeting. Aim to maximize time spent on these 1–1 sub-discussions. Let the other 13 people in the meeting stare blankly while they debate.

If you take those discussions offline to save time, you’re doing it wrong.

Talk over other people constantly to get your thoughts in. Take plenty of time to speak your mind while you have the stage. Ignore any raised hands and don’t let anyone tell you you might be misunderstanding.

Listening is for the weak.

The goal is not to cover everything planned. The goal is to cover as many random tangential topics as possible.

Step 5: End the Meeting with No Concrete Resolutions

There’s no need to write down any answers to the questions asked. Everyone will remember. If someone is out sick that day, someone can schedule another meeting to update them!

Don’t clarify any next steps either. We want maximum confusion about who is doing what and by when.

Most likely, you’ll have to schedule a follow-up meeting because you didn’t actually accomplish anything. Great work.

Start back at Step 1 and re-invite the same fifteen people. Bonus points if you need to include more stakeholders next time.

Happy meeting scheduling! I hope your calendars are as full as your hearts.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *