Meetings Can Be Better If

• People don’t bring laptops and phones in. Just do sketches. Emails and internet are distracting.
• No PowerPoint is involved. Alright, Keynote slides are fine. Or even better, just still images.
• We all keep it lean. Just 5 participants maximum. Odd numbers are best, so in case we go democratic, we can outnumber the rest.
• It’s done in day-time, before lunch.
• We keep it short. One hour is the max.
• We have action plans thought before. Brainstorming for hours isn’t a thing.
• We plan it a few days before, but not weeks before.
• We think that the discussion can be relatively longer than a short email.
• We really need see faces.
• Internet connection is best — only for conference calls. Anyway, conference calls are painful. So, I’d rather skip them. Do emails instead.
• They’re actually replaced with emails or digital communication tools or whatever. (Can’t stress enough.)
• Each participant is given equal or appropriate time to express themselves. Meetings often benefit only extroverts.
• Prepared. Meaning, each participant is briefed on the subject of meeting and they’re asked to write first-hand solutions to be discussed further. Nothing is worst than coming empty-handed and spend 1 hour talking about nothing.
• We have whiteboards or stick-its, of course. See point 1.
• We lose the projectors and replace them with monitors (big ones). Projectors are shitty.