Boring meetings are great opportunities to catch up with unread mail.

Sure.

Or to plan your next vacation.

Or to recall that party you had over the weekend.

But if you're wondering whether that meeting is really the best use of your

time at that moment, why not address the cause instead of the symptoms?

Why not work to prevent boring meetings from happening rather

than look for ways to reuse boring meeting time with a second activity.

If you're following that podcast a bit longer, you know, that I prefer to

meet for a doing rather than a meeting.

But if it absolutely has to be a meeting, here are a couple of ideas.

First cut the meeting to one third.

And mean it.

This is easy if everyone leaves out the boring two-thirds.

Or second, take a vote five minutes into each presentation,

Do you want to learn more?

And only move on.

If the majority vote is yes.

And actually you will be amazed at how much relevance

you can fit into five minutes.

Or third, use the sorry principle which goes like this.

“Who gives a damn?” at any point during the meeting.

If the presenter or the meeting leader, doesn't have a compelling answer

to that question, the presentation or even the whole meeting is over.

Or fourth, like Amazon for go presentations in favor of a study hall.

Instead of presentations, employees prepare memos.

Reserve, for example, 30 minutes at the beginning of each meeting,

exclusively to reading these memos.

That makes sure that the memos get read and thus are prepared well.

Or fifth, publicly raid the meeting, as well as the organizer after the meeting.

This way, you can quickly see who organizes and leads meetings in

a way that makes a difference.

Don't give into boring meetings.

Change them.