The link between meetings and burnout
The link between meetings and burnout
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome (if you aren’t new then again) to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on …
I know I have been somewhat AWOL the past couple of weeks and I hopefully will have some exciting personal news to share. As a mini apology below the post are some photos from my recent trip to Santa Barbara!
I am also considering changing the posting schedule to Fridays (and that explains today’s post). If you have any feedback on getting these posts on a Friday, holler back!
On to today’s topics .. meetings:
In a conversation with a friend recently we discussed one of the most controversial topics about the workplace. Meetings. Almost no one likes them, but we all have to attend, participate in, organize and run meetings. As humans, the thing that separates us from other animals is our ability to co-operate and of course, in today’s workplace, that means meetings. I'm not going to spend time today on the merits (or lack thereof) of meetings but I want to spend time on meetings and job satisfaction
I ask you this: Do you know anyone who spends their entire week in meetings but is happy? You’d be hard-pressed to find one person however in order to get the proverbial monkey off your back meetings are a necessary evil.
I never worked in Corporate America in the 1980s and 1990s but I cannot imagine companies had as many meetings. Is it the pace of work has speeded up that is causing this shift?
Whatever the reason covid has exacerbated this issue with all of us as little 2x3 inch rectangles on Zoom. Zoom happy hour anyone? Haha!
Ok, I think I've digressed enough. Back to my own experiences. When I was an engineer I cannot ever recall this many meetings and my friend who I’ll call Adam sent me a text saying he had spoken to a career counselor at Berkeley. The career counselor had provided Adam with a brilliant framework for assessing a job. Meeting to independent work ratio.
For my friend in particular at a previous company, his mix was 25% meetings and 75% independent work. He was a product manager and product managers coordinate .. a LOT, especially at a bigger company. At larger companies where he worked later on in his career, his Meeting to independent work ratio mix shifted from 25% to 50-70% leading to his deep dissatisfaction as a product manager. I so agree with that and here are three things I think are true:
Firstly, If we map dissatisfaction with hours of meeting on average I think it will look like this. The higher the dissatisfaction the higher the burnout
Secondly, my friend made a great point about personality type (introversion and extroversion) and how this could impact how long a person would like to be in meetings. This is how that would look:
This does not need to be the case that only extroverts can be good product managers (or any specific career)
In my case im probably 65/35 (self work and meetings)
Thirdly, a hypothesis we have is that the more entrepreneurial one is the less dependent one wants to be on others and this could map to why certain people prefer to be entrepreneurs
We also had a couple of shared observations on this.
One: the more time of the “40 hours” spent in meetings would cause us to work more hours to balance the % out in order to “feel satisfied”. I have had so many days where at the end of the day I have this gnawing feeling that I got nothing done. Leading to guilt … to checking email or working to “ find balance”
Two: when this was happening we could never fully articulate why we were tired at the end of a day. Knowing that you dislike bureaucracy is not enough. Thinking about the bureaucracy/meeting: work ratio as a ratio helps articulate this better.
Third: Have you ever asked in an interview, how much of my week am I expected to attend meetings and used that as input into a hire (as a company) or join (as an employee) in your decision? Probably never!
There is of course a fine balance between autonomy and bureaucracy and it's important to find a balance that works for you.
The next time you interview, suss this out! It could be the key to finding satisfaction at work
Santa Barbara
And finally a few pictures from my recent visit to the ever to beautiful Santa Barbaraew pictures from my recent visit to the ever to beautiful Santa Barbara
