Welcome to the eighteen day of the 30 days writing challenge of this year. You can find a list of all the articles I wrote at the end of each article. Please have a look at the end of it to understand how can you participate in this one.

The Overwhelming "Let's Have A Team Meeting About This" Culture

At some point in the evolution of startups, something got really out of hands. And I mean, really, really out of hands. I'm obviously talking about the culture of meetings. Every time. About everything. With everybody around. Somehow, a relevant tool for making things happening turned into the biggest time waster ever.

I'm not saying meetings aren't necessary, on the contrary. I'm saying that things are getting done when people are actually doing stuff, not having a meeting about doing stuff. This overwhelming culture of "let's get together for the sake of getting together and feel important and startup-ish" is, in my opinion, in top 5 causes for small businesses failures.

I've had my fair share of long, boring and completely useless meetings, so what follows is a very short list of best practices for actually having sane and at the same time productive meetings.

1 Ask Questions.Early

If possible, try to ask as many questions as you can before the meeting even kicks off. Or before the idea of the meeting is strong enough to be even planned to happen. Most of the time, getting answers in time will completely make unnecessary meetings, well, unnecessary. It's better to ask a dumb question and receive a smart answer, than to spend an entire afternoon in a dumb meeting, when you could have done so many other smart things.

2 Set Time Limits

Whatever you do, please, pretty please, with sugar on top, don't participate in any meeting that doesn't have a time limit (except for emergency meetings, when you really have to stay there until the fire is gone). Avoid meetings that have only a start hour, because, if you give humans enough time to spend recklessly, they will. I think this might be formalized into a theorem and be easily demonstrated, but I'll leave just as an exercise to you.

3 Say "No" If You Have To. Ruthlessly

If you have something to do and you get invited to a "super interesting" meeting with the accounting team from the floor 23th, just say "No". You don't belong there, man. Just say "No". This blunt approach has a very subtle consequence: if you say "No" enough times, people will learn that about you and they'll simply stop asking you around, because they know you'll say "No". Problem solved.

4 Ask For Meetings Minutes And Recaps. Always

But if you really do participate in meetings, always ask for some sort of recap after those meetings. Go to extreme length in obtaining these, because they'll prove very useful for the next meeting, or meetings. We tend to forget and repeat the same things over and over, so having some sort of a log of what happened in all the meetings you ever been into is a very good way to avoid making the same mistakes. At least that.

So, this was my (very short) list of best practices for having meaningful meetings.

How Do I Participate In This Challenge?

The criteria for @challenge30days account to vote your post are:

• post must be at least 300 words long
• post must be original
• post must be on best practices
• post must use the #challenge30days tag

Previous Posts In The Challenge

• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Keeping A Successful 30 Days Challenge
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Selecting Relevant Crypto Projects (Day Two)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Surviving In The STEEM Universe (Day Three)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Working Remote (Day Four)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Working From Coffee Shops (Day Five)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Learning A New Language (Day Six)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Choosing A Crypto Exchange (Day Seven)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Running (Day Eight)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Getting A Good, Relaxing Sleep (Day Nine)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Incorporating Yoga Into Your Daily Routine (Day Ten)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Choosing (And Working From) A CoWorking Space (Day Eleven)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Integrating Meditation Into Your Life (Day Twelve)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For A Healthy Relationship With Your Mobile Phone (Day Thirteen)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Learning And Using A Programming Language (Day Fourteen)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Networking (Day Fifteen)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Choosing And Implementing A Productivity Framework (Day Sixteen)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Keeping Yourself Digitally Connected In A Healthy Way (Day Seventeen)

Steem on!

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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