Kia ora.
This is going to be a bit more of a rushed Hoddle, the reason being I’m writing this while in a work meeting.
Oh, the joy of meetings.
Meetings are great when it allows you to engage with your colleagues, build a rapport, and have a level of connection that depending on your day-to-day role, you may sorely miss. They’re also good if there is a purpose or a function, in that you can expect to come out of said meeting with takeaways or actions with which to proceed.
And speaking of takeaways, having them catered is always a bonus.
Unfortunately, meetings are often not great.
I recently shifted to a new role in which I find myself in 6+ hours of meetings on certain days, which is brutal when you also need to... well, get work done. A lot of meetings or calls are remote, so I can work away on things on my PC while trying to keep one ear open.
The worst meetings though are the ones where you are unlikely to have any actions come your way, but you need to actively listen just in case. I’ve mentioned before that I work in IT; to be more specific, I work closely with data, and so I find myself in a lot of calls, meetings, and groups where changes and updates to data are being discussed. This means I need to be always listening because there could be flow-on impacts to my team (and therefore the whole business).
Consequently, I am sometimes sitting in a meeting for a couple of hours, actively listening - only to have zero input or takeaways. It is not fun.
Do you have any meetings you wish you could just not go to? Does your job even have meetings? Or maybe you dream of a job that has lots of meetings? Trust me, you shouldn’t.
Matty’s track of the day: Over the Hillside, by The Blue Nile
And now for your links:
Robert Vilahamn talks to the club about his plans for the future after signing a contract extension
Alasdair Gold’s takeaways from Spurs’ first training session in Tokyo