Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash

Offices aren’t for everyone. Creative minds and free thinkers often have no place in a 9-to-5 environment, but many still do it if the pay is good and the work is somewhat fulfilling. However, if there’s one thing that even proficient office workers hate, it’s meetings.

Coming from a job where all you did was operate a conveyor belt, meetings will feel like you’ve really moved up the ladder. That is, until you realize they’re more about using fancy business jargon and less about actually getting stuff done. For all intended purposes, meetings best serve those who need to repeat their sales pitch. For the rest of the group, they’re time killers.

In a memorable quote, Pulitzer prize winning columnist Dave Barry slams meetings as being partially responsible for our failure to achieve more as a species.

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.”

— Dave Barry

It’s an exaggerated remark – not all meetings are useless – but one that does resonate with most business types. And the reason this is (mostly) true is because we still haven’t figured out a way to collaborate and communicate our work and ideas efficiently. Until now.