Comment by digging | Hacker News Reader

Comment by digging | Hacker News Reader

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I have a strong inverse relationship between talking and fatigue in meetings. If I'm talking, it's generally because there's something for me to say, which means I'm engaged. I guess it does hit a limit where I've talked too much, but in my role that's pretty rare.

What gives me fatigue is the opposite. It's the meetings where I have nothing to say whatsoever. It's driven by the refusal, or inability, of organizers to plan or focus their meetings. I spend >95% of my meeting time trying to judge how little attention I'm allowed to pay to what's being discussed. Because I usually can't just leave and actually focus on work, but I also can't pay attention because the conversation is meaningless to me (think: discussing extremely specific problems of projects I've never heard of). There's no winning move, so "try to keep an ear open for my name or other keywords while I fidget, draw, or otherwise waste time" is unfortunately the optimal strategy in most meetings, even though it's extremely tiring. Can't imagine if I had to have my camera on.

Now that I've written all this out... I might just start leaving meetings and hope I don't get fired.

If you have nothing to contribute to the meeting, and nothing you need to hear from the meeting, just don't go. Unless you're working for one of those companies who care about meeting attendance from uninvolved people (which companies are these so I can avoid them?), then nobody is going to notice or care that you're not there.

I'm double- and triple-booked most time slots of most days, so I'm constantly skipping meetings, and it's just not a big deal. Even when I'm not double-booked, I am ruthless about what meetings I agree to attend. If there is nothing for me to say or hear, I just decline the meeting and get actual work done. In 25 years of working, Lumbergh has never even once stopped by my desk to say, "Yeaaaaaah, so, Peter, I notice you haven't been coming to meetings..."

> If you have nothing to contribute to the meeting, and nothing you need to hear from the meeting, just don't go. Unless you're working for one of those companies who care about meeting attendance from uninvolved people (which companies are these so I can avoid them?), then nobody is going to notice or care that you're not there.

You've overlooked my prior point: I'm not given enough information (any, actually) to know this beforehand. I can assume, because it's very likely true, but then once or twice a month I'm missing from a meeting where my presence is actually useful.

In an idealized training video, that's the moment where my manager would ask, "Hey, I noticed you've missed some important meetings, is there anything I can do?" and I'd explain the situation.

In reality, at the start of the meeting they'll bug me 0 or more times until they give up (regardless of whether or not I'm needed at the meeting, because they probably don't know either), they'll never ask what's going on, and their mental model will slowly adjust to see me as more and more "unreliable and disinterested".

You are not alone. I'm in the same boat.

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