no meetings

[cos]

Looking at my work calendar for today and seeing ... nothing ... felt surreal.

I scanned back on the calendar until I came across the last day I had no meetings, January 4th. Well, there were two, but they were marked "no" so I thought they'd been cancelled - until my coworker said "weren't you traveling then?" Oh yeah, that's the day Daisy and I drove back from New York. I'd worked from the NY Google office while we were in NY and then I took a day off for the drive back. So I scanned further back in my calendar... aha. My most recent work day with no meetings was Wednesday, November 30th.

Comments

[estheruth.livejournal.com]

Oh, My birthday.

[keturn.livejournal.com]

that's funny, I also thought "my birthday" when I saw January 4th.

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

Pro tip: decline more meetings.

[cos]

That would've made it not possible to do my job.

Probably more than 50% of these were meetings I scheduled, meetings I asked to have scheduled, or meetings or trainings I ran, and a good portion of the rest were either ones I co-ran or calls or test sessions that required my support in order to achieve their purpose.

We're actually very good at cancelling meetings if the reason for their existence dissipates, and ending meetings earlier than scheduled when we're done with what we went there to do. But my job absolutely required spending an average of several hours a day working with people from other groups or teams or companies in groupings that generally had to be scheduled in advance so we'd have a room and so we could be assured that the right people would be available simultaneously.

IOW, that tip just doesn't apply here.