
If Your Laptop Is Open, You're Not Listening - jgrahamc
http://benbobsworld.blogspot.com/2016/05/if-your-laptop-is-open-youre-not.html
======
ACow_Adonis
If I feel your meeting is relevant to me, I'm listening and you don't have to
worry about banning laptops. If you don't think i'm capable of deciding
whether a meeting is relevant to me, fire me because I'm bloody incompetent.

If your meeting is not relevant to me, I'll try to get out my laptop and get
some actual work done while my time is being wasted or if we meander into
areas that are not of relevance.

If you ban laptops, and for some bizarre reason I still have to attend and
your meeting is not interesting to me, i'll code on bloody pen and paper and
enter some of that code into the computer once I get back to my desk, or i'll
try to do SOMETHING productive. Trust me, you don't magically have my
cognitive attention...

I had a consultant/workmate try to ban laptops in her meetings. No prizes for
guessing whether I think it was the laptops or the meetings (or the
consultant) that were the far bigger waste of time/attention/money...

Hire competent people and let them decide what the best use of their time
is...or at least admit that you think its justified treating other's in the
workplace like children...

~~~
humble_dev
It's not black/white situation. Sometimes only part of the meeting will be
relevant to you. By using laptop or any device you show no respect to the
person that organised the meeting but as well you might losse a lot. I agree
that people tend to organise to many meetings but doing anything else on that
meeting is not a solution. Sadly (as I am developer too) I realised that
developers often thing that they are to smart to do anything else to code and
this is the only good way of spendign their time.

~~~
cma
Easier solution: quit demanding "respect" by asking people to pay attention
through irrelevant stuff to appease your ego. Some meetings will have things
relevant to different groups of people over time, and you don't need
everyone's full attention for the whole meeting.

~~~
collyw
Why bother turning up in the first place if it is so irrelevant?

~~~
vidarh
It's not always a choice. Even when it is not overtly made mandatory, it often
have "political" consequences if you are seen as detaching from what happens
in the team. Being physically present has significant signalling effects.

~~~
Freak_NL
"You guys can probably handle this without me. Do you need for me anything
else?"

Or, if that is not acceptable due to workplace hierarchy, talk to your manager
and explain the problem. If being present is a political necessity, chances
are so is not secluding yourself behind a screen.

------
rffn
It is pretty simple. If I am forced to attend unnecessary meetings I either
bring my laptop and it is a valid assumption that I am not 100% following the
meeting or I bring something else if laptops are banned (printouts, etc.).
Worst case I will just space out. If meetings are relevant, well planned,
interesting I will listen and contribute. I still might bring and use the
laptop for notes.

~~~
limaoscarjuliet
I cannot agree more.

The amount of lunacy and idiocy going on during these "quick" meetings has
been driving me nuts. Imagine a room full of VPs, each making no less than
$200K a year, discussing the need to spend $1K on hardware.

And the punch line - we just spent more salary $ during this meeting, than it
would take to rent these for a year from OVH or AWS.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
I worked with a guy that used to say: "I need approval for a $500 hardware
buy, but I can call a meeting that would cost thousands of Dollars in salaries
any time I want"

I wish companies had a "meetings budget" and had to justify the ROI of each
meeting... One can only dream :)

~~~
vidarh
One practice I've found useful, that is more general, was to issue weekly
reports breaking down the cost of each activity. That is, I'd solicit a ~5-10
line breakdown from everyone in my team of how they spent their time that
week, and I'd apply average costs for their function and tally it up.

So we might see posts like $2k for a planning meeting show up on the report,
and suddenly people started paying attention to what time was spent on - both
for meetings and otherwise.

And making arguments like the one in your example. It also meant being able to
make actual estimates over whether pursuing a certain optimization would be
worth it vs. buying more hardware.

Amazingly each place I've done this at, they were initially confused why I
wanted to do this, as apparently it was weird and unusual to have engineering
issue such breakdowns

~~~
Chris2048
Wonder how much "weekly report compilation" would cost :-)

------
deanCommie
I'm really tired of the trope that "Multitasking is not scientifically
possible, and anyone that claims they are more productive doing it is lying to
themselves."

It's paternalistic and condescending and always written by those that don't
like to multitask already to make themselves feel better about the
multitaskers around them.

And it completely ignores those of us with various forms of Attention Deficit
(I would venture a much larger component of millennials and software engineers
have this compared to previous generations) who know what works for us and
what doesn't.

If you give me 3 1-hour-long tasks and tell me I have to work on them
sequentially with no switching, I will get bored in the middle of each one,
get distracted by something shiny, or stare into space if you try to keep me
from doing anything else. I'll need to take a break between each one because
my brain is so strained from having to focus on one thing.

In all, I expect each one to take me 1.5-2 hours plus another 30 mins for
breaks between, so maybe 5 hours total at a minimum.

On the other hand, if I can alternate and context switch between all 3 as soon
as my brain gets bored, I'll be able to keep engaged and work continuously.
Sure each one may take me 1.25 hours, but I won't need a break. And the whole
thing will get done in 3.75 hours, not 5.

(Numbers completely fabricated, obviously)

The same applies to meetings. I'm not defending coding or working on a
challenging problem while listening to a presentation. That will certainly
occupy my mind and I won't hear the presenter. But checking some non-
complicated emails? Organizing some files or documents? ANYTHING menial is
perfect because it allows my brain to stay engaged while also paying attention
to the presenter. Without this minor distraction, if I am forced to listen to
a boring presentation with my full focus, I will unquestionably lose the focus
and find myself drifting off and wondering how much I've missed.

~~~
kuschku
The argument you’re making is the same reason why we switched from batch
processing to multitask processing.

Waiting on IO and refocusing is such a slow task that time scheduling other
CPU-heavy jobs during that time can optimize performance a lot.

~~~
falcolas
The problem with this argument is that computers take very little time to
context switch - a couple of milliseconds at most. Most humans take closer to
30 minutes or an hour to do the same type of context switch.

As a fellow ADHD'er, I realized some time ago that while multi-tasking, I was
just doing multiple things poorly. I'd lose the stack, forget tasks, lose
conversations - basically be a waste of space, except for the very rare times
where I could write brilliant code due to hyperfocus.

When not on medication, I will be forced multitask, but I do so with "tasks"
which require differing amounts of concentration - so I can leave one part of
my mind stewing on a problem while looking at cat pictures.

~~~
kuschku
Same here. The discovery that I should only do one CPU-heavy task at a time
was very useful.

Also, bosses + coworkers prefer if you always seem busy – so, while planning
code, take a block of paper, and draw flowcharts, class diagrams, etc – it
helps visualize the thoughts (so you keep them even if interrupted), and it
makes you seem more effective.

------
atemerev
The best meeting policy I saw was this one:

1) All meetings are capped to be maximum 15 minutes long. No exceptions. (This
means everyone have to be prepared, and there are pre-designed meeting plans
to follow).

2) There are two slots each day that can be used anytime: one "briefing" in
the morning, and one "debriefing" in the evening. If something urgent happens,
there is also one possible slot mid-day for emergency meetings, to be used
sparingly.

~~~
wccrawford
Did they ever _not_ schedule the first and last meeting? How often were those
meeting pointless? How often did they run out of time and have to abandon the
meeting? What did they do when that happened?

------
bfathi
I am the original author of this article. I just found out that a friend had
posted it on HN and found these comments. Most seem to fall into a few
categories:

"If I'm not paying attention, it's because your meeting is boring or
irrelevant."

I am not talking about people who open their laptops in a few (or even most)
meetings where the content is boring. I'm talking about people (including
myself until recently) who open their laptop or pick up their phone in every
single meeting they attend. If you are not that person, no reason to be
offended. If you are, then please explain to me how every single meeting can
be irrelevant.

"I have ADHD, I can multitask. In fact, I work better when I multitask."

Somewhere between 5% and 11% of all children in America are believed to have
ADHD. Even if quadruple that number for people in the computer industry, that
still leaves the majority of the population as non-ADHD sufferers. Those are
the people I'm talking about. The majority. Also note that I'm not just
talking about people in the computer industry, but all information workers.
The incidence of ADHD in the general population is not nearly large enough to
explain the epidemic I'm describing.

"But I use my laptop to take notes."

The second sentence in the article clearly states that it is fine to do so
"for the purposes of the meeting - to take notes..." I guess you must have
been multitasking and missed that sentence. :)

"Maybe you should make your meetings more interesting if you want me to pay
attention."

I will just quote from the article again: "As the meeting organizer, I should,
of course, strive to make the meeting relevant and the decisions concrete.
Otherwise, I deserve to be ignored for the latest tweet or alert."

------
rdl
I disagree with this strongly, mostly because I hate conversations or meeting
where people debate something which has a factual answer which someone with a
laptop/internet/shell/calculator/IM client/Google can answer definitively in
10 seconds. Instead, people waste minutes (or, worse, say something will be
tabled until later, perhaps calling an entirely different meeting!) to deal
with it.

If you look at the most productive meetings at places like Google, people have
data and processing capability to hand, and end up referring to it. If that is
"IM the guy in another state who isn't needed for the meeting but has the a
answer to this specific question", easy choice.

~~~
tonfa
But you don't need 10 laptops for that. I agree with the article strongly. At
Google, the team with the best meeting culture I've been in had a no laptop
culture (not rule, but new team member would adjust pretty quickly when
everyone else had no laptop except for the presenter / note taker). Our
meetings were shorter than in my other teams, and more productive.

But I also agree, if a meeting is not productive for you, there is no need to
attend them (and meeting notes should be sufficient to catch up).

------
ramblerman
People aren't interested in my meetings hence we must remove the distractions.

Another more constructive approach might be to make your meetings more
useful/engaging.

~~~
jle17
And to plan them better, with the right people, at the right time.

Have an established topic, stick to it, only bring in people for whom it is
relevant, make it short and to the point, choose a timing that don't interrupt
people activities.

------
jholman
I certainly agree that if your laptop is open, you're not really listening.
(If you're looking up something for the meeting, then the fact that you're not
listening may well be a contribution, of course.)

What I think is not so clear is whether or not it's okay to have people at a
meeting who are mostly-not-present, but just background-listening. They might
know that the meeting is mostly not for/about them, but that it might touch on
their stuff, and they want to stay loosely informed. Of course, if someone
takes good notes and sends them around, those might be just as good, but maybe
no such notes exist.

~~~
kqr
I'm sometimes called to attend meetings to act as a "tech advisor" – in case
any technical questions arise they know I'm physically there so they can grill
me all they like.

Most of the time, I don't say a word during the whole meeting other than
"Hello, my name is so-and-so and I'm a software developer at the company" and
then "It was a pleasure meeting you, looking forward to next time!". I just
quietly work away in a corner, pretending to take notes. The project managers
feel more confident when they know I'm there, so I can be there just as well
as anywhere else.

As long as you're not expected to be actively participating, there's no harm
in not being actively participating.

------
aaron695
So many comments segwaying into, meetings waste my time, and I'm a coward who
won't address this issue instead, so I have a right to use my laptop cause I'm
smart.

~~~
Intermernet
I haven't seen any "I'm a coward who won't address this issue instead"
responses, rather "I'm not in a management or directorial position to address
this issue so I'm stuck with it".

Individual employees who try to change corporate behavior tend to be
unsuccessful, especially against such ingrained concepts as "We should just
call a meeting!".

~~~
collyw
Hardly anyone in the comments has mentioned the work power hierarchy, so it
seems reasonable to assume many of them are too coward to address it properly.

~~~
Intermernet
In this example, the work-power hierarchy means that employees get paid to
waste time in meetings. If they pull out a laptop to do other work, then they
are accused of "not paying attention". They aren't cowardly to let this
particular sleeping dog lie, they're accepting that, despite their initial
attempt to be more productive in otherwise wasted time, the company will pay
them anyway.

If the _owners_ (or stakeholders) of the company failed to address this, then
they _still_ can't be described as cowardly, just incompetent.

The employees, if they're being paid anyway, aren't going to rock the boat
improving the productivity output of the employer, especially after they've
been shot down once for attempting to actually be more productive. They'll
just shake their heads in disbelief at the fact that the company is willing to
pay them to be unproductive.

------
tluyben2
Most meetings (by far) could be done in minutes. Instead (and I have 1000s of
anecdotes literally) people like to pleasantly do things, make jokes, laugh a
lot etc. Do painfully long introductions (while everyone was in the mail and
already checked Linkedin etc). But worse: ill prepare or not at all and just
improvise. Worse yet: see it as a break or even (half) day out. There is place
for this, but that's not something that should be the norm. It's teambuilding,
sales etc and it's important. For normal meetings, when prepared, meetings can
be done in minutes; send an agenda upfront, let people do a few rounds of
discourse about those points in the agenda via mail/slack and give them a
chance to do some research. Then discuss and decide efficiently.

There are enough exceptions but that's not most meetings. Most meetings are
not about a critical company policy or about a critical technical dilemma
where core infrastructure has to be changed. Etc.

------
minikites
[https://twitter.com/philltopia/status/727190980726689792](https://twitter.com/philltopia/status/727190980726689792)

"New side project: price tags on Google Calendar events based on the inferred
hourly rates of participants."

------
Vanit
Let me preface this by saying I don't bring my laptop to meetings, but all the
meetings we have are interesting.

I'd argue if you're having trouble getting your employees to pay attention
either they don't need to be there, or the meeting isn't being run properly.

------
Communitivity
I've seen no comments about the legitimate use of a laptop in a meeting. I
take my laptop to meetings all the time, and am paying attention. I use my
laptop to take notes, using a different piece of software for different kinds
of notes: Notes for textual bullets, CMapTools for a concept map of the
meeting,and a Trello clone (albeit not as good as Trello) for tasks. Usually
most of the time is spent in concept mapping, as that is my preferred method
of notetaking.

The idea that we all still have to take notes using pen and paper astounds me,
and seems horribly inefficient.

------
aninhumer
It depends what you're doing with it.

I find that if I sit doing nothing in a somewhat boring meeting, my mind will
wander and I'll often zone out completely.

Whereas if I use my phone to play simple visual games which don't require any
language processing (e.g. freecell), I'm much more able to concentrate on what
the speaker is saying.

It's not quite as good as listening properly, but overall I think listening to
everything with half an ear (or more) is better than missing parts of the
meeting entirely. And if anything directly relevant comes up I can stop and
focus.

------
dcuthbertson
Is having your laptop open so different from doodling[0]? Even if there's no
comparison, one can work, or puzzle out other issues during those parts of the
meeting which they already understand. Banning laptops entirely is a good way
to reduce productivity.

[0] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/education/2014/07/keep-
ca...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/education/2014/07/keep-calm-and-
doodle-on/)

------
golergka
That prompts me to say the same thing when people complain about their kids
are always in their phones: have you tried being interesting than a phone or a
laptop?

If you will actually give people information that is important to their job,
they will put a laptop or phone aside and listen to you very closely. But if
they're always distracted by something else, could you be wasting their time
with this meeting?

~~~
rtpg
Now I partly agree with this, but there is a bit of activation energy to
conquer.

If the audience starts by looking at the phone/laptop, you have to basically
buzzfeed people into paying attention ("Oh, here's a cat picture haha, now
back to our MRR discussion") for enough time to get the 30 seconds of
attention to get them. Because if not, people's attention is already captured
by the device

If the policy is like "don't use your laptops for the first couple of
minutes", then at least you timebox the important stuff and give the talker a
chance.

~~~
dingaling
> buzzfeed people

That's a great idea and reminded me of an SAP SME we used to have who would
insert meme photos at arbitrary points of a slide-deck. Worked well for
breaking the zombie-trance of attendees.

Another rule I saw was to allow people to bring laptops but leave them on a
table at the back of the room. Still available for reference and emergencies
but the attendees had to make a conscious and obvious to go to the laptop.

------
prashnts
I strongly disagree with this. I have the inattentive kind of ADHD and the
coping mechanism that works for me is to multitask.

Few people are wired to comprehend "tl;dr" versions of stuff -- if the meeting
is going for eternity, please don't blame me for not listening.

------
flurdy
Which is why I try to insist on stand up meetings. Not the "agile/scrum"
morning status micromanagement stand up meeting, but normal meetings Ie quick
architecture design, general discussions, generally around a white board of
some type. Standing up will ensure people cant be on their laptop/ipad and
will also keep it short.

For eyes forward meetings bring your laptop, they are mostly waste of time
anyway.

------
nikki-9696
If your meeting is not interesting or relevant, I don't need to have my laptop
open to ignore you.

I rarely, if ever, attend a meeting where every single person is expected to
pay attention for the duration. On the rare occasion this happens, people DO
pay attention. Maybe it's the meetings and environment that need changed.

------
juped
"Multitasking is impossible" is seriously overgeneralizing from personal
experience. It's just not true that it's impossible. It's certainly impossible
for _me_ \- if _my_ laptop is open, I'm not listening. But that's not true for
everyone!

~~~
rffn
I was always under the impression that human multitasking means failing at
multiple things at once. It seems to be just that different people feel
different about success.

------
x5n1
If people are bringing laptops and cell phones and are on them in your
meeting, you are not really having a meeting with them. They are there, but
they are not there.

------
draw_down
If my laptop is open your meeting is not my only priority. Sorry.

