The last couple of days at work have been physically and mentally draining because of the large amount of time that we have spent in iteration planning. The time devoted to these activities are well spent, but I was stunned to think of how little time I have spent in a formal meeting that has lasted for more than hour or two since leaving my former job. It doesn’t surprise me that I have been more productive with having spent less time in meetings, but what does surprise me is how low my tolerance for long, drawn out meetings now is.

Here are a couple of reasons why:

• Agile methodologies promote spontaneous or osmotic communication, reducing the need for formal meetings. I think this leads to an attitude (intentional or not) where most meetings (especially the long ones) are disliked.
• Spending more times in meetings increases your resistance to their draining effects. I can think of many occasions in my previous job where I had meetings for at least 4 or 6 hours a day (especially at the start of a development phase) and had no problems handling them. Considering that the longest formal meeting I have attended in my current role has been an hour, it doesn’t surprise me that my attention span is now so short.
• All the contributing factors to an ineffective meeting (such as a lack of agenda, no time limit, no assigned priorities) are only exacerbated by the points above.