boredom in meetings

How to deal with boredom in meetings ?

Its’ a norm for the experienced

You wake up, you groom yourself, you take the bus to your workplace, you attend a meeting in London or Brussels, done, and yey, lunch! — yet your’e still in hypnagogia. Some days, you just cant’ seem to blow the horn. As a senior employee, you would understand that even though everybody is doing their responsibilities, sometimes our bag of energy could also deplete and thats’ totally relatable. The truth is, nobody works exactly eight hours everyday. Even in meetings, its’ a norm that four hours of thinking and talking is never effective, maybe other people can be do that but its’ for the tough ones or the aliens.

So why do we get bored in meetings?

It takes longer than expected

The major cause of boredom in meetings is when teams lose track of time that they end up prattling instead of giving a solution-based conversation. Most of the times this can be annoying to the other attendees – they could have done something more important than listening to long, unsettling discussions.

There is no goal

One of the worst things to happen in meetings is when there arent’ preset agenda. If this happens, the team will surely lose its direction and end up not defining the solution. It is the meeting organizers’ full responsibility to provide the agenda for the meeting otherwise attendees will never know the reason why they are invited in the first place.

The topic has gone too off

Even if the topic has been set, but if the discussions are not managed, your meeting will just prolong and become directionless. There are attendees who love to block, rebut and oppose. They should be kept shackled as they are the ones who usually mess the train of thoughts. If a topic becomes unfocused due to two people arguing, the tendency is, others will just shy themselves in the corner.

We know nothing about the discussion

Some people have been doodling all their lives and its’ the result of this. For a job that constantly requires you to attend a meeting even if you dont’ have to just because the management trusts on your wit doesnt’ mean you know everything. Going to a meeting without having a single idea about the topic is a waste of time. Its’ a major fault of the organizers why we cant’ keep up with the topics that dont’ have summaries and havent’ been pre-distributed that doodling might just be far more productive than the kind of useless meeting you are already in.

We simply dont’ know the others

Think of it as a first day work and your’e immediately summoned for a technical discussion without even knowing who the other attendees are. Of course a simple hi and hello cant’ entrap that reserved modesty your’e feeling — because your’e still on adjustment period! A meeting room full of strangers isnt’ as bad as you think but for sure theres’ something going around in that cute poker smile your’e plotting. Simply, you cant’ talk much just yet so your’e bored.

Bird Office, the expert in meeting room reservations teaches us how to keep ourselves from being bored in meetings

The real truth about long meetings

We know that meetings can be very annoying especially if others are not paying attention. This is meetings’ worst enemy! According to research, participants are not attending to what is being said about 40% of the time, their attention span in “passive tasks” is about 15 minutes. Time is the most essential element in a meeting — the longer it takes, the more the attendees get detached from the discussion. To resolve this dilemma, many organizations resort to quicker meetings like Scrum. They are now timeboxed to a little less than two hours. There are a lot more tactics to make them effective.

Know your responsibilities

Keeping tab of what an attendee must do versus the responsibilities of the speakers is a very effective technique. As an attendee, if you feel like losing track of the discussion, feel free to break the momentum and ask as much as you can. This way, others will slow down and let you hop in. Take note of the discussion specially the most technical ones. Those you dont’ understand, you can review or research later. The role of the organizers is also critical. They can add visuals to media presentations or insert humor to keep the ball rolling. Meetings can be as engaging and fun by setting up ice breakers. Instead of your attendees resorting to facebook and twitter, why not engage them by projecting their topics in the activity board?

Take the event outside

When you cant’ seem to catch their attention, take your team to a meeting outside the office and you will see the difference. Suggest a meeting at a hotel in Paris for a unique venue. Bird Office is an online platform dedicated to providing quality meeting rooms across Europe. Our qualified team caters reservations of board rooms, workspaces, training venues and even large amphitheaters. Our support is available 24/7 for any requests, change of plans and order of equipments.