Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time

This article from Reid Hastie, Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Busines, hit on one of my fundamental organizing principles: I don't have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time (as Professor Hastie alludes to in this article). For some reason, I know at a visceral level that one moment you exist, and the next you don't. The "ride" is over before you know it...and you can't predict it. I know that I will probably (and thankfully) never run out of money, but for sure I am going to run out of time....and there is so much to do in this world.

In business, we like to convert time to money, and the reverse. But in practice, time and money are different. We can get more money, save it, move it between accounts and use it on demand. These operations don’t apply easily to time.

Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can’t earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time — somewhere in the future — so we waste it now and carelessly steal time from our families, friends or ourselves when we come up short at the end of a workday and need to stay an extra hour.

Probably most important, we are blind to lost time opportunities. When we choose where to invest our time, as opposed to where to invest money, we are more likely to neglect what else we could have done with it.

And, once meetings are over, we don’t effectively assign responsibility for a bad meeting or take personal responsibility as we should. Sure, someone called the meeting, but we all leave it unhappy and blaming everyone, including ourselves. Psychologists call this “diffusion of responsibility” and one consequence is that no one thinks it’s his or her job to fix it the next time.