At Language in Common, we don’t usually work an 8-hour day. I mean, sometimes we’re in the office for eight hours. But we don’t force our process around an arbitrary schedule. Because as most of you know, you can’t actually, truly, I mean really, be creative for eight straight hours. It’s important to have as much time as possible in which to harness whatever creativity makes its way into your day, but riding it all day long, each day? No way.
So we break up our day into two workable chunks. There’s a morning session and an afternoon session. And those go as long as they go.
Problem is, since we’re small, and mine and axel’s roles are completely blurred (basically, we share a brain) we spend a bunch of time in meetings. And meetings fuck up the whole two-creative-sessions-a-day thing.
Paul Graham’s got a kick-ass article about how much meetings suck right here. He makes a great distinction between the schedule of someone who makes things and the schedule of someone who manages things. Axel and I are both. Which is yet another reason why meetings muck us up so good. Here’s a taste:
I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
We don’t have a solid solution to this really, other than to do our best to avoid meetings that seem useless (read: 90% of them) and try to be extra clear with our clients and collaborators about the dangers of reckless meeting setting. Anyone got any good ways to solve this?
Comments
3 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.Yes, it’s definitely hard enough to get into the flow, without something looming on the horizon.
It’s a good time to finish up those little loose ends though, the mundane kind of tasks which benefit from a deadline.
so wait, what do you two do about it? how do you handle the meetings without letting it mess up your work?
when ever possible i try to schedule meetings in the morning between 10 am and 12 noon. if it’s an afternoon meeting never after 2pm, clients tend to lose concentration after this time (so do i). when busy try to only attend 1 meeting per day. small businesses get caught up in the trap of thinking they always have to be available when their client calls. Your good at what you do, they’ll wait the extra day for you! i always attend meetings with an agenda (in point form) of the key issues that need to be discussed and try to stick to it. i never ever take meetings on a thursday afternoon or anytime on a friday — this is my uninterupted design time. i don’t tell clients that i don’t take meetings on these days because i know that they will find a way to HAVE to have a meeting on these days! i tell them i’m not available or i’ll be on location art directing (technically i’m not lying). It works for me. love your blog
) cheers r
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