It’s been a long time since I invented a word; I think ‘wugahumfdamup’ was the last one. However, in this frantic age of online meetings meetings meetings I realised there was a word, or really an acronym which definitely did not apply to me and which could be replaced by one that was not only easy to say, but came pretty close to its namesake, “phobia”.
FOMO (or Fear of Missing Out for the cave-dwellers) seems all too prevalent in our society and people view their success in life by how many followers they have, by being included in anything and everything. Do they not get exhausted by the constant barrage of contact and detail being thrown at them? Relevant and important information is always welcome, but how often is it missed amongst the fluff or, worse, the trolling?
Back to meetings of the online variety. A recent study (1) of over 630 workers found that they, and by extension probably “we”, spend over a third of our working week in meetings. If you assume even a modest amount of those are irrelevant and multiply by the salary cost, then we are looking at a very expensive pastime. Moreover, apparently, those of us who manage up to four team members spend as much as 22 hours a week in meetings, more than half a standard week!
Some of these meetings are obviously vital, but I like to think a show of hands for those who feel all are vital would be a tad sparse. It seems that despite the majority believing many of their meetings are unnecessary, 83% of us still accept the invitations!
We need to connect with each other and, as many of us are working remotely now, online meetings are a key way to do this. However, why don’t we have a 2024 resolution to have an absolute maximum of ten hours spent in meetings a week? At least then we would have time to perform the actions which arose from the few relevant meetings, and also time to decompress from the gallery of faces and PowerPoint slides.
Here's an idea: if everyone had to state two benefits they had gained at the end of each meeting, it might weed out some of the unnecessary ones (and also identify who was watching TikTok at the same time).
Clearly, I have a self-diagnosed FOBI..A, a Fear Of Being Included..Again.
(1) Dr. Steven G. Rogelberg, 2022