by Jenna Pope

Created on: December 18, 2009

Having worked as a legal secretary for over thirty years, I have lived through my share of boring meetings.  Usually, these meetings were held by a superior of minor authority, permitted to foist himself upon the rest of the office staff at regular intervals – usually on Monday mornings or Friday afternoons, days of the week and times that were the least amenable to inuring the attention of a captive audience. 

Author-Read Books are Sleep Inducing::

One such boss – every Monday morning for an eight-week period - made us sit together at the conference table and listen to a motivational book on tape, read by the author.  (Authors should never, ever read their own books.  That’s what actors are for – to read copy with interesting voice inflection, variable cadence, and crisp, understandable syntax.)  This particular author, though, read in a mind-numbing monotone.  As he droned on, I would feel the fuzzy ambience of sleep envelope me as I floated off to a state of somnambulistic limbo  – until a co-worker would bring me back into the present moment with a sharp jab of the elbow.

Techniques:

There are many ways to survive boredom at this level, and the wise office worker should always hope for the best, but prepare for the worst:

Here are a few coping techniques:

1.  Play Hangman or Tic-Tac-Toe with the co-worker sitting next to you;

2.  Mentally count backwards in a foreign language;

3.  Take down the meeting in shorthand;

4.  Write a short story using the people in your meeting as the characters.  (In my career, I wrote enough office-meeting short stories to compile an anthology.)

5.  Plan your dinners for the next month;

6.  Make your grocery list;

7.  Take frequent bathroom breaks;

 8.  Get a doctor’s excuse for Narcolepsy and sleep through the next meeting – penalty free;

9.  Do your Christmas list;

10.  Sit in the back and do needlepoint;

11.  Look like you are taking copious notes, while really paying your bills;

12.  Study for your night school management class by memorizing your notes on flashcards;

13.  Create a controversy.  (Ask a question that will emotionally engage the meeting chairman, thereby jerking you (and the others) back into a state of hyper-alertness.

Passive-Aggressive:

There are many creative ways to live through boring meetings.  Because of my passive-aggressive tendencies, my personal favorite was creating a controversy.  At least, by creating a controversy or getting up and walking to the Ladies’ Room, I was doing something proactive.

Workers Unite:

Don’t let yourself become bored to distraction at your next office meeting.  Arm yourself with these boredom-busting tools, create a few of your own, and emerge from your next meeting feeling unruffled, peaceful, and wide awake.

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