Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Meetings as Prod

Meetings have several purposes (no, really! Sometimes a meeting isn't a bad thing). Sharing of information, getting consensus and making decisions, etc. can all happen in a meeting.

But sometimes a meeting is just there to force you to actually work on something.

Need to prepare a presentation and know you're a procrastinator? Schedule a review meeting a good amount of time before the presentation. You'll have to do the presentation for the review meeting. Procrastination moved!

Dread the "let's come up with some goals" process that happens every year or every six months? Don't worry about it... yet. Just do the prep work before your review meeting. That's your real deadline.

It's not that you don't have to do things - you do. And it's not that you have to enjoy everything you do - you don't. It's just that sometimes you need a bit of a nudge to get them done, and you can let a meeting be that nudge. 

In the end, I'm basically doing the work to avoid being embarrassed that it isn't done. And when it's work I don't take pleasure in inherently, well, that's okay. It still gets done. Thanks, meetings!

1 comment:

  1. Nice. I am going to start implementing this one ASAP. It fits totally with the notion of iterative software development.