Meetings Suck! How We’re Likely To Spend 20 Years of Our Life in Them.

That statistic is both mind-blowing and nauseating. As someone who absolutely despises meetings. This is something that got me thinking a lot about my career.

I recently had a birthday (43) and whether I’m going through an early mid-life crisis of some kind. I was stirring over the thought in my mind. Twenty years in meetings, twenty years of my life being sucked away.

Then I asked myself. Would another 20 or so years of my career spent in meetings drive me to the point of insanity? I can’t stop thinking about it and it’s absolutely doing my head in.

This leaves me in this state of flux, wondering if working in a lucrative corporate job is basically a road to death by a million cuts via meetings. If you’re reading this and feel my pain, give us a clap in unity for our joint dislike of meetings.

How Covid made it even worse

One thing is for sure, Covid has not made it any easier. In fact, it’s added a lot more meetings to my calendar.

I added to this predicament by moving 1,800 kilometres away from work to live the family life in a location we’d always wanted. This remote working has added to the pain of more meetings.

Here is the scary part.

Again back to the point. The average professional will spend 20 years in meetings over their career. I feel nauseous just thinking about it.

It was super triggering and made my anxiety levels explode. I wondered how much my time had been wasted in an office meeting or of more recent times a video meeting?

The time I had no meetings

There was a part of my career where I had zero meetings. This is when my wife and I started our own business.

We created a business we’d always wanted to run. We worked from home and business was going great. It was hands-on work, very different to the rest of the work I had done for my whole career.

There were no meetings and it was physically active. Unlike the rest of the work, I have done prior to and after it. I was truly in a happy place, even though we weren’t making as much money as our salaried jobs.

No meetings and daily exercise via the work was a sweet spot. I did this for just over two years. It was ace.

It got me wondering….

Am I doing what I am supposed to be doing?

Either way, if you are like me and hate meetings, tell me what it is about meetings that you don’t like?

I find most of them pointless if they do not have a structure or purpose.

How do we get this time back in our lives? I’m not quite sure, but being stronger about pushing back if a meeting is required or not is a start. I’ve been pushing back more at work myself of late.

Apart from this, I’m not sure of the answer now, but I can tell you this. A vent does help.