Endless, Endless, Endless Meetings

When I was in 4th Grade, we moved to Colorado. Three months later, we moved back to Rockford. Back to the same school, back to the same people. But stuff happened during those three months. Social dynamics changed. For the last two and a half years of grade school, I felt like I was playing catch up.

Years later, in college, I never seriously contemplated the idea of a study abroad semester, even though I would have loved it. I was afraid of stuff happening while I was gone. Social dynamics changing. And never catching back up.

Many years later, for numerous reasons, I’ve found myself attending meetings. I don’t especially care for meetings. But I am afraid of missing them, particularly things like standing monthly meetings. During a missed meeting, stuff happens. Dynamics change. You make it back to the next one, but you’re behind. You’re stuck playing catch up.

Part of all that is the catch up dynamic. Part of it too is the idea that some things, once missed, you’ve just missed them. Think about epic moments in sports where millions of people are watching live and something incredible happens, something even bigger than the big moment would seem to call for. Kirk Gibson’s home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Christian Laettner’s shot at the end of Duke-Kentucky. Auburn’s Kick Six to beat Alabama.

I saw all those live! When I see a highlight or hear a reference, the moment comes back. Contrast this with other monumental moments which were purely historical - Carlton Fisk waving the ball fair, Secretariat bringing grown men to tears at the Belmont Stakes - and while I get how timeless those were, they don’t have the same visceral, emotional impact.

Now, nothing that happens in a freaking meeting is going to be like a ground ball rolling between Bill Buckner’s legs. (I mean, in terms of epicness. Many meetings frankly do have a lot in common metaphorically with a ball helplessly rolling between your legs.)

But there’s a real commonality there besides. You don’t want to miss something epic in sports. You don’t want to miss the unexpected. You don’t want to be asleep when the incredible occurs. And, similarly, you don’t want to miss something important in a meeting. You want to be fully present for anything that might possibly be important.

My first year of college is when we all got proper email addresses. It wasn’t long before I subscribed to rock band discussion lists. If a hot topic breaks out on one of those - you want to be in on it right away! You don’t want to stumble across it two days later when everything’s already died down.

Years later, the mailing lists were different. At one point I was probably on at least 25 different discussion lists for the Green Party. Some were low volume, some were not. And it always felt like you needed to be there when a discussion broke out so you could meaningfully participate. I would never let myself fall more than a day behind. I rarely let myself fall more than an hour behind.

Two of the most high volume lists were for members of the Green National Committee. At some point somebody referred to the experience as akin to being in an endless meeting. We’d have a proposal to consider. Unlike a standard meeting where you’d get to that point in the agenda, and discussion would start, and at some point discussion would end, in the virtual meeting space of an email list, discussion could seemingly last indefinitely, and you’d feel like you’d have to pay attention to everything. And you’d get mad at people who weren’t doing the same.

In retrospect it is clear to me how awful that was. (I think it was fairly clear to a lot of us at the time too.) I don’t know exactly what the solution should have been. But almost anything would have been better.

Today, I’m not on any email lists quite like that. I do however work for a company that uses Slack, and within Slack, we have multiple meeting rooms going. And I’m also President of the school PTO, and our board uses Slack too, and we have multiple meeting rooms going. And there’s a feeling in both cases like, every time there’s something that pops up in any room, there’s an onus to go check it out. To not fall behind. To not have to play catch up. After all, what if I’m the person who has the answer to the question posed? If I don’t weigh in right away, am I not holding everyone up? Making all of us fall behind?? What kind of person would do that to a team???

My wife had me watch part of The Social Dilemma the other night. If you’re not familiar, in a nutshell, it’s a documentary about how social media exploits all of us.

Whether it’s explicitly their intent or not, for me, Facebook operates a lot like an endless meeting. And one result is, if you take a week off from Facebook, well, it’s almost like spending a semester abroad.

Is that a stretch? Maybe. After all, the very nature of Facebook is such that you’re necessarily missing things - we have so many Facebook friends, are members of so many groups, we just can’t read everything. But maybe not. If something important comes up there, well, you don’t want to miss that, and Facebook algorithms make sure you don’t miss that, right? I mean, what if your friend’s aunt dies and you don’t notice and then when you interact with them later you don’t say anything about it?? What kind of person would do that to a friend???

Set aside the insanity of 2020, the pandemic, the election, the constant parade of outrage. Years ago, it was already like this with Facebook. Like detaching from it meant detaching from reality. Which would mean never getting caught back up. Intellectually this seems absurd, but emotionally, it’s that 4th Grader’s fear of being left behind that seems to pervade.

I can’t handle leaving notifications unchecked. I can’t even handle leaving email in my inbox. Every week I aim for Double Zero: no email in my personal inbox, no email in my work inbox. Most weeks I either get there or I come very close. I have to. Or I start to feel overwhelmed. A different overwhelmed? Because am I not overwhelmed already?

And that’s where I’m going with all this. Am I not overwhelmed already? Haven’t I been overwhelmed all along? Haven’t most of us been?

What have I gained by years of plowing through 300 emails a day? Years of keeping up with Facebook? Years of feeling like I can’t take more than a day off?

Or, a better question, what have I lost? What are we all losing?

For one obvious example, I never went to Europe in college like other people I knew. And everyone I know who did that, it was important, even formative for them. And I was just too scared to seriously consider it.

All of the time I felt like I couldn’t just up and walk away from whatever was going on… what could I have walked away to? Where could I have wandered off to? What satisfying result might have found at the end of a rainbow I could never bring myself to chase?

I’ve been working from home for 5 years. At different times this has made the work-home balance a little… fuzzy.

But lately, everything has seemed fuzzy. The school day has a fuzzy end time. The work day has a fuzzy end time. PTO conversations in Slack are liable to happen any time of day. In the same hour, I can be participating in a PTO conversation, a work conversation, doing some coding, starting the washing machine, getting the boy on a Zoom meeting for school, fetching the mail… and so even though I’m not going anywhere, it’s like I’m constantly doing everything. So I don’t fall behind.

And in the midst of it all, I still feel like I need to see what’s going on on Facebook.

It’s not sustainable. But it’s also time to stop and consider what’s important, and maybe, what’s changed.

Facebook is a little hard to fully detach from, because it’s a way a lot of school information is shared and disseminated. But there’s really no reason to be constantly paying attention. It’s not as important a vehicle to stay in touch with people as it used to be, as so many people have drifted away, and it’s also not a useful place to get news like it used to be. Plus, it’s an incredibly crooked company. I’m not sure how to draw and enforce the line, but it’s time.

(An aside. Some people have long since given up Facebook in favor of Twitter, where the dynamic is even different: whatever appears, a few hours later, it’s pretty much gone. And maybe it’s not coincidence that I can’t stand Twitter. I just can’t think like that. Or maybe Twitter really is the same phenomenon, but at hyperspeed, exponentially worse, and it so exceeds my ability to keep up, that’s why I can’t stand it. I can’t even imagine using something like Snapchat or TikTok as a way to keep up on things. The thought that teenagers today are in such hyperdrive to keep up… it’s terrifying.)

A couple of years ago, my ol’ buddy Charlie emphatically - these are his caps - informed that I would NEVER read all of the books I want to read. He meant that generally, not just directed at me. But that’s stuck with me since he said it.

Part of me has wanted to challenge that. Well, I can read all the books on my list, you just watch! But deep down I know he’s right. Even if I get through this here stack, some other stack will appear. It’s ludicrous to think in terms of getting through the entire list. It’s much more fruitful to think in terms of reading to read, not reading to attack a list.

I don’t really know how to let go of the idea of falling behind. I don’t know how to excise those 4th Grade fears. But they’re not motivational. Working my ass off to blitz through email does provide some satisfaction and burden lifting, but there’s no challenge being foisted to the volume incoming. You can’t endlessly work your way out of situations. Sometimes you have to walk away from them, or they’ll eat you up.

On top of everything else I’ve long had a hard time with quitting anything. Call it a misplaced sense of obligation, call it fear of being a quitter… whatever it is, it’s just very hard to pack up and walk, from an organization, from a friendship which isn’t really a friendship anymore, from whatever. It’s just hard to let go. If something supposedly meant something, and it doesn’t truly mean anything now, then it’s like an acknowledgment of wasted time. But why double down on wasting time? Why double down by burdening yourself with things that are responsibilities only because they’re responsibilities?

Stuff happens. It doesn’t make sense to fear it. If you’re constantly tuned in, so as not to miss anything, then the truly important moments are getting cheapened by the flood of everything else. It just wears us down.

I don’t have answers for all of it but I can tell it’s time to make changes. Life is not an endless meeting. Meetings are the time to gather to discuss what you’ve done and what you’re going to do next. If you’re in an endless meeting - or an endless series of meetings - it means nothing’s getting done. And we’ve all got real things to do. Stuff to make happen.

It’s time to miss a few meetings, and catch up on life.