Tired of People Wasting Your Time?

Tired of People Wasting Your Time?

The complaint is a common one: I'm in meetings all day. I can't get anything done.

A manager's schedule involves lots of meetings, every hour on the hour. A maker's schedule requires longer blocks of time for completing focused tasks. (This post by Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, is helpful in making distinctions between the two and also navigating a compromise when managers need to meet with makers).

The problem is, managers are often tasked with strategic thinking, which requires maker's hours. Strategy isn't a physical good--something that gets "made," but neither are many of the products of the new economy. Strategy, when it's actionable, is as tangible as code or data analytics.

An hour isn't enough time to get absorbed in a task, so makers who know they are going to be interrupted are less likely to start a task that requires focus, and managers who have their time blocked out into small increments are less likely to think strategically. What can we do about it? The Real Neuroscience of Creativity by Barry Scott Kauffman in Scientific American lends some very valuable insight into how our brains work. He references a paper called The Brain's Default Network that is absolutely necessary reading.

The main idea is that our brains have three networks:

Executive Attention Network: involves full absorption in an external process, whether it's coding or listening to a colleague speak about a problem without getting distracted.

Salience Network: a process of baton-passing between the outer world and the inner landscape of the mind. As soon as you start to think, the phone rings. An email needs a response. A colleague pops in. A meeting is on your calendar and you have no idea why you've been invited.

Imagination Network: the interior landscape, where strategic thinking and future scenario planning take place. Like the Executive Attention Network, it requires concentration.

We very rarely have time to concentrate fully on either the outer world or inner landscape. Salience dominates our professional lives. Masters of the Salience Network constantly scan the outer world for challenges and opportunities, minimizing unnecessary distractions. But what about when we really need to concentrate? How can we find the time?

When you feel like others are wasting your time, you have a couple of options. First, refuse any meeting that doesn't come with a clear agenda or purpose. Ask why you've been invited, and what contribution your presence might make. If there's no value in attending, then you're allowing your own time to be wasted. Is it out of fear of missing something? Fear that you'll be perceived as problematic by your peers?

And then ask yourself two more important questions:

  • When you do find yourself in possession of uninterrupted time, what do you do with it?

  • How are you wasting other people's time?

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Rita J King is the EVP for Business Development at Science House, a cathedral of the imagination in Manhattan focused on the art and science of doing business. She is a strategist who specializes in the development of collaborative culture by making organizational culture visible so it can be measured and transformed. She is a senior advisor to The Culture Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and a Fellow at the Salzburg Global Forum. She makes Mystery Jars, writes about the future for Fast Company and invents story architecture, characters and novel technologies for film and TV as a futurist for the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Follow@RitaJKing on Twitter.

Photo: bikeriderlondon / Shutterstock

Syed Muhammad Umair

Product Leader | Catalyst | Health Tech Evangelist | Business Coach

9y

A nice read Anita, a lot of times especially in IT it comes out to be a brainstorming session. Its justified at times but makes sense if the axe have been sharped before, so you can all chop your part of tree.

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David Pickeral

Leading the Next Wave of Mobility Tech

9y

I think the most important thing to remember is that while ALL email program calendars default at an hour when setting appointments, ALL of them CAN be set to 30 or even 15 minutes. Throughout three different employers now over 15+ years I have become known for setting up teleconferences known as "Speed Synchs" where there is a clear agenda of--what has happened new since the last synch, what are the implications, what are the necessary action items and follow-ons to include other meetings--IF any

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Ron Hackbart

Manager Instructional Design at Boys Town

9y

The other side is we are a culture of activity and visual stimulation. So when you have time to sit and just think (strategizing, planning, analyzing) people tend to think you're day dreaming because you aren't "doing" something. So the options are to move to a private location to think which now takes you out of your comfort zone, try to plan in small snippets or chunks of time which leads to constant refocusing or spend time thinking outside of office hours which takes away from personal/family time. Which would you choose?

Don Otis

I am seriously retired...

9y

Good insight, as always, Rita. For me, the Poet said it best, "this is not the way I chose, The Way had chosen me." As I allow my spiritual quest more importance in my life, I find that my views regarding importance and waste often seem childish in retrospect. On the other hand, while allowing oneself to simply Be with the Now has value, it makes planning for retirement somewhat problematic. Cheers, dro

Svyatoslav Chernysh

Руководитель группы развития

9y

A waste of time is something that brings you joy. What brings you joy, can not be empty.

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