August 25, 2021
some thoughts after too many meetings in the last week
hi, its day 1 with this blog active. ironically, it is also my bday lol.
[quick thought on birthdays: it just feels awkward at this age now. I don’t think I like the attention anymore. oh well ]
today has been a lot of meetings, ranging from a high-level exec strategy meeting, to a more granular project planning meeting, its been a lot. Reflecting on these meetings, I want to share some thoughts on communication.
Communication and meetings
I have a love-hate relationship with meetings. I’m an extreme extrovert, so I love talking to people. But, at the same time they are often disruptive to deep focus sessions, where I usually get most of my work done. Further, a lot of meetings tend to go round and round, attempting to decipher often un-refined ideas.
I have a thesis that most of my meetings can be easily avoided or significantly shortened simply by having better documentation and/or taking time to write out what I like to call expected-notes(EN).
– Lets start by talking about documentation. I understand that documentation is annoying, and to be entirely honest, during all my previous internships, I always avoided doing documentation at all costs. HOWEVER, now that I am a whole ass full time engineer (guess I’m cursing on this lol), I totally see the value. Just in my last week, I have spent over 10 hours in meetings, simply trying to understand a series of simple architecture decisions, variable definitions, data models, etc. This is trivial stuff, and yes, we are a startup and these things literally change every-freaking-day, but still, would be so much nicer to just be able to go look and read something instead of having a meeting and then needing to take the most detailed notes known to man. Thus, in the interest of everyones time. Document your shit dude.
– Okay, now lets talk about ENs. This is a new concept that I came up with literally just now. It roughly goes like this:
15 minutes before your meeting, think critically about the goal of the meeting, what you want to talk about, what you want to walk away with, etc. Then, once you’ve done this, write down the notes you expect to have at the end of the conversation, ofc with gaps for critical parts that need to be filled in. This allows you to enter the meeting with a mental image of what the conversation should look like, saving everyone time as you are able to push the conversation along in the direction it needs to go.
Granted, this model doesn’t always work. There are some meetings that are entirely just discovery and question based – and for those idk what to do yet. But for meetings where you are sharing something, getting feedback, or have some tangible outcome that you are aspiring for, build your EN before your meeting.
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Okay thats it for now, I’m gonna go ride my penny board and eat some food before I write some docs (see that writing babyyy). byeeeee
There are a multitude of reasons why this is good practice. Most notably in my mind, when you write, you synthesize ideas in a manner that isn’t necessarily achievable via talking. The ability to backspace or completely change a sentence is game-changing. I can say something, recognize it makes no sense, change it, and not confuse anyone, all by writing a proposal.