To meet or not to meet

It has been four days since I posted anything here in my blog. The week had been very busy on both professional and personal fronts. It was mostly packed with meetings at work – quite a lot of them. Some meetings were super important and some were not. They were either just for attendance or to take a break from other regular meetings.

Meetings are such a deception. You don’t know if they increase your productivity or they just siphon it off. “To meet, or not to meet” is worthy of a philosophical contemplation. I was in one such meeting last week where I had nothing to do. It was more of a broadcast session for the entire organization but not of town hall or all-hands types. This meeting was an introduction to another meeting which is important, with proper slide deck and all. And the presenter was in a different geographical location, without video conferencing. His pitch and intonation were as dead as a dodo and flatter than Salar de Uyuni. Naturally, people gathered in this side of the world were beginning to zone out. Some people were checking their mobiles, some were checking the neighbour’s mobile and some went into some form of a deep meditation.  Only one was  very attentive for his job was to unmute himself and say “We are good. We don’t have any question” every ten minutes.

I started doing what I have done in some meetings long ago. I looked around the conference room and found a coffee mug placed on a table. It was solitary. No one was around the area and I was sure there will be no disturbance. I took a deep breath and started starting at the coffee mug. For a moment, I paid my due respects to Yoda and tried moving the mug to the right with my mind. It wasn’t moving a bit. It was long time since I last did this. So I took a deep breath again, squinted my eyes for focus and tried again. It wasn’t moving even a millimetre to the right. I was disappointed. It should have been because I don’t meditate daily. Unwilling to give up, I tried again real hard but in vain. I just quickly looked around to check if anyone noticed my failure. No one did. They were minding their own businesses. Throughout the meeting I tried multiple times but the mug stayed where it was like it was cemented. The meeting ended and people dispersed quickly.

Later in the day, one of my colleagues mentioned he wanted to discuss something about the earlier meeting. I was puzzled. He said, “I have done this before for sure. This is confusing”. There was a pause and then he continued, “I was bored in the meeting and so I decided to practice telekinesis. How much ever I tried, the coffee mug on the table didn’t move even a bit to the left. I don’t know what is happening to me”. Sigh!

What do you think? What is your take on meetings?

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