Meetings – a Practical Alternative to Work

Have you ever sat in a meeting and felt your eyes slowly glaze over as you realise that you don’t have a clue what is going on around you? Well, if you haven’t then you must be one of those incredibly lucky few. If you are in the group that recognises this feeling of impending doom when you’re sat in an overly warm room, all around a table, with your eyes slowly closing and your boss across the room from you, then this may well be for you. You see, I have found some interesting ways to look busy whilst staying awake and still letting everyone talk over your head. How far you want to go with them may well depend however on how much you wish to keep your job.

Learning a system of shorthand is always a fantastic, if slightly time consuming, way of getting around the problem of looking busy. Not only will this help you if you are cajoled and bullied into taking the minutes at any time in the future, but it also means that you can write just about anything whilst pretending to be taking notes on what is being said around you. You could, if the fancy took you, spend the entire time slagging off your superiors or even writing a completely unrelated article to the topic at hand without anyone being any the wiser. Pros at this will ensure that they continue to look up at the chair of the meeting or at the speaker to keep an outward appearance of having their mind on the topic at hand, and experts will quickly learn how to space their writing to make it fit with the topics being discussed.

This can of course be used for any number of purposes and I cannot help but think that working on and tailoring your plans for world domination must surely come high upon this list. This means that you will not only look busy writing,,  but you will also have a look of intense concentration on your face as you deliberate whether your latest genius idea will actually fly. On top of this, the more detailed your notes the more impressed the powers that be will be with your attentive ability to get everything down whilst you can evilly laugh as your plans come to fruition. On the downside in the short term you may end up as the allocated minute taker in the next meeting, which means you might actually have to pay attention.