One of the things I hate about my software job are the ridiculous time-wasting meetings I have to sit through every week. As I advanced from regular programmer to team lead these meetings became more frequent and really dragged on my productivity.
Avoiding Meetings
If you haven’t read the book the 4 Hour Work Week I’d recommend checking it out. The author, Tim Ferriss, talks about guarding your time by forcing as much communication and decision making as you can through email or phone calls and going to meetings as a last resort. He calls it “the art of refusal and avoiding meetings”.
Wasted Afternoon
I started applying his suggestions and found myself in fewer meetings and being more productive. Unfortunately, I’m not a productivity ninja like Tim and still get roped into meetings that are a waste of time. Just yesterday I thought I had successfully dodged a meeting that had no benefit to me until the last second when my boss swung by my cube and cornered me into wasting an hour of my time during a critical part of the afternoon.
Killer Zombie Meetings
These types of mindless meetings that keep you from getting your job done so you can get on with your life are just another reason that software jobs suck. We do what we can to avoid them but like a herd of killer zombies they just keep coming, and coming, and coming for us. There is no where to hide, you’ll have quit your job to finally be safe from the killer zombie meetings.