
Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings - nottombrown
http://meetanotherday.com/
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bunderbunder
I picked up the habit of doing this manually a couple years ago, when my
meeting load mushroomed following a reorg.

I also started getting assertive about declining meetings if I thought they
were asking for too much time. Too many folks were in the habit of reflexively
blocking out a full hour for a decision that could be made in 15 minutes plus
a briefing email that everyone could be expected to read ahead of time. I was
surprised to find that that one didn't really burn any social capital. Far
from being offended, many of my colleagues thought it was a good idea and
started following suit.

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cat-dev-null
People that want to pontificate, seem promotable and do less real work love by
inviting everyone, every hour/day/week/month with standing meetings, while
said folks trying to do more real work should take time out to hear themselves
blather on abstractly about work someone else may be (maybe you) get voluntold
into doing.

No agenda... not attending. Not reasonably necessary... not attending.

Sounds d!ckish/selfish, but survival skills in large orgs require some
gambits.

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rperce
Do you know, you're allowed to swear on the Internet? It's okay, I promise.

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bane
A technique I learned years ago once Outlook starting broadcasting
availability is the notion of "defensive scheduling". Basically schedule work
time the same as you treat any other meeting. If a meeting request comes in
and it conflicts with your previously scheduled work time? Decline.

I've used it pretty successfully, but it requires a little bit of discipline
to make sure you have scheduled yourself out a few weeks in advance and that
you don't start accepting meetings during that time.

(note: some people will figure out what you're doing when you have 6 hour
blocks of time every Thursday. Schedule lots of smaller 30minute and 1hour
meetings and people trying to invade your calendar won't know the difference)

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sulam
I do this all the time manually, but it's not hard or time-consuming. Why
would I want this service trying to do it? It takes me maybe 5 minutes to
block out the portions of my week that I don't want people to schedule over.

(Of course, they still schedule over it. But they also schedule over real
meetings, so I don't think there's some magical way to name a meeting that
makes it seem important enough that the meeting locusts won't try and eat more
hours than you have in a day.)

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restlessmedia
I thought exactly the same, I've always blocked out my lunch (recurring) for
the gym which is trivial to set-up. The rest can be ad-hoc depending on how
much of my time I need to put off limits.

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lostcolony
I have a recurring "Developer meeting", with some of the other devs every day
at 12-1 because I was so tired of having the management types, having filled
the rest of their calendars with useless meetings, deciding to schedule me for
useless meetings that prevented me from getting lunch (as in, Monday, Tuesday
is wide open, then Tuesday morning, bam, meeting invites from 10:30 until
2:30, no breaks).

That, and responding to every meeting with "tentative", so that I'm free to
re-evaluate the meeting's priority against real work up until the last
possible second, has allowed me to keep my sanity in a culture of time
wasting.

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AstroJetson
People where I work try to book meetings across lunch on a regular basis. I'll
get the invite and ask "are you bringing food?" No food and I'm not showing
up.

I did have one smart person slide a pack of crackers across the table at me.
As I ate them I was declining every meeting with them for the next month. That
solved that problem.

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rdl
I do this and also take advantage of the chance to take a conference room for
an hour or two, vs. open plan desk with my back to a room full of people.

I get probably 5x more done per minute in the conference room.

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mxuribe
During a previous job when I had a more manageable workload, I actually
enjoyed the open plan desk. The interaction with my peers, co-workers etc. was
actually helpful - if not always for productivity - at least for ideas,
general sanity checks, etc. And then i got my current job, and the workload is
just crazy...so any tiny interruption kills my productivity...So i do similar
to what you do: block some time in a conference room, an hour or two at most.
I happen to book a conference room on the other side of the building, where
most folks don't recognize me. But i always have mixed feelings about it.
While maybe i am not getting 5x more done, i'm definitely loads more
productive. But to me it seems sad, and says alot about how crappy some jobs
can be, when to get anything done, you actually have to work away from your
desk and peers. Ah well...

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rdl
I think the trick is either to work from multiple locations (based on task),
or to have a reconfigurable space.

In my next office, I am going to do a team-based pod system. Teams of 4-8.
Single large room to start (2k SF or so), broken up however they decide (could
be one huge room, or individual offices, or some combination, or smaller
offices plus one big room, etc)

The thing I really want to try is offices with openable walls on 2-3 sides.
One side opening into a shared team room; the other opening into a hallway or
open plan space.

(The other trick is doing this somewhere with <$24/mo per SF real estate.)

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lolc
Bwahaha cynical me really likes that.

It's sad that adding a calendar item of "Working - do not disturb" is not
considered an option but cramming bullshit into your calendar is.

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eru
Have you actually tried "Working - do not disturb"?

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jldugger
How toxic is the work place that you can't block out time for Actually Working
on your calendar?

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bane
It gets pretty crazy when you move into middle/upper management and your day
gets consumed by meetings with teams waiting for you to make a decisive
decision about some minor point of conflict.

It gets worse the more people end up under your hierarchy and delegation
becomes a major priority. But then your life is consumed by synchronization
meetings so you know what your delegates have been doing on your behalf and
can answer for them/find connections and opportunities across delegates.

~~~
RealityVoid
So you become a human kernel: scheduling, handling resources, resolving
conflicts, starting processes, synchronizing.

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Spearchucker
This is one of those things I just assumed everybody did. I've been doing it
for years, and can't imagine keeping my sanity if I didn't.

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memnips
Once I connected my calendar I actually had trouble distinguishing my real
meetings from the decoy meetings. Impressive and frightening.

~~~
christinac
:)

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yesimahuman
Genius. Debating whether to go with it or not. Awesome idea!

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christinac
thanks! if you do try it out, we make it easy to get rid of the cal events if
you like – so, we hope, you won't be stuck with more decoys than you wanted.

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Ologn
I used to block off every 9AM-10AM, 4PM-5PM and 1PM-2PM slot as busy slots. If
someone really needed to have a meeting at one of those times they could ask
me. Because often, those were the only slots the 10 people in the meeting all
had open in the immediate future so people would then schedule meetings at
those times. I grew tired of 4PM-5PM meetings which extended to 5:30PM, 6PM
etc.

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deepfriedtech
I'm one of those people that leave work at 5, even if there is a meeting
going. My wife and children are far more important than helping someone make
more money.

My boss knows I don't work nights or weekends. I routinely ignore night and
weekend emails because when I leave work I'm "unemployed" as it were until the
next work day. Once you set the precedent, word gets around. No one asks me
for anything other than to do my job. I've been doing this for years.

Besides, I have toddlers at home as well as teenager. My wife is knackered by
the time I roll in, so I get home as soon as possible to help out.

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smegel
I have a strangely recurring meeting from 11.30AM through 1PM every day -
don't you dare try and arrange a meeting in my lunch hour!

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xirdstl
I'm fortunate in that I work from home a couple days a week regularly.
Generally, people will wait until I'm in the office to schedule meetings,
giving me those full glorious days to get things done.

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deepfriedtech
I loathe meetings and do my best to avoid attending them unless there is a
specific technical issue being discussed that falls within my wheelhouse. I
especially dislike meetings with non-technical people present. To have to stop
the meeting constantly to explain things is annoying, so I ask to be excused
unless my area of expertise is involved. A later walk-to-the-local-cafe-for-
espresso with my supervisor gives me anything I need to know without the lame
questions and hand-holding.

There is a reason I ask to be in the server room with the lights out...

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mturmon
I get where you're coming from, but as you probably know, one must be careful
not to take it too far. Metaphorically, one of these days, the server room
you're shut up in might be outsourced to the cloud, and you weren't at the
meeting.

More concretely, by saying "no" to these meetings, a person is advertising
that there are some standard capabilities that they don't have (e.g., "not
skilled at working with non-technical people" appearing on an evaluation at
some point). This will limit the kind of roles that person will be able to
fill. What seems like a strength from one angle ("deeply technical") can look
like a liability from above.

(Not a down voter, BTW, just have some personal experience with the problem.)

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eru
Decline most meetings, not all.

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breerly
Just tried it - unfortunately it doesn't disable the meeting notifications so
once you fill up your calendar with decoy meetings you get alerted all day :(

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gregpilling
I do this manually already. Doesn't everyone else? My Monday morning meetings
are always booked, as are my Friday afternoon meetings.

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sas
Baha — amazing! Love the idea of calendar decoys.

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krithix
for those of us who don't want to connect our calendar right off the bat, what
are some example meetings this creates?

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nottombrown
It adds important things like: "Review OKRs", "Planning sync", etc.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xizuaap0lbjt0k/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xizuaap0lbjt0k/Screenshot%202016-03-29%2018.05.48.png?dl=0)

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krithix
nice! :D

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takno
Adding fake meetings is an easy and effective thing to do. Honestly can't see
what value a service adds here

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nevon
I've been thinking about how to build exactly this over the past few weeks.
Awesome!

