Since I started working as a Product Owner last year, the quantity of meetings that I needed to participate in increased exponentially. In the beginning I accepted every meeting request without a second thought. But as time went by, I realised that going to every meeting without thinking of the implications was not only un-productive for me but for everyone else involved.
I posted on Twitter the reasons I decline meeting requests. Here they are summed up.
Time to regroup after the holidays
Meeting fatigue
Respecting blocked time slots
Out of working hours
Not enough time to prepare
Some of these reasonated with people, some of them didn’t. So far my experience is that since I started making the a conscious decision what meetings I can go to and which ones I can be fully present at, I am being more productive. I just hope that the people that receive the declines see the value in me doing this in their work as well.
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