How to make meetings more useful

Plus musings on the wisdom of 1970s classic rock and the need to consider what thoughts really are telling us

Hello and welcome to my newsletter. I am so glad that you are here.

What are your personal signs that you are overloaded and things are becoming too much? A telltale sign for me is when I catch myself having ‘Baker Street thoughts’. Baker Street, a Gerry Rafferty song later covered by the Foo Fighters, includes both a famously haunting saxophone solo and a lyric that haunts me personally:

Another year and then you'd be happy

Just one more year and then you'd be happy

I catch myself in similar thinking when work piles up. Things will be better when I finish grading/resubmit the article/achieve tenure/win the grant/publish the book/get promoted/go on sabbatical/end my term as department head/the pandemic is over. 

Just one more week. Just one more term. Just one more year… 

Spoiler alert: things don’t turn out well in the song, nor in Rafferty’s life.

Baker Street thoughts tell me it is worth it to trade today’s peace of mind for some future tomorrow’s better peace of mind. They tell me to accept being exhausted, miserable, “light in your head and dead on your feet” now, because the future, well, that is going to be better…

But in my experience, it doesn’t work that way. I keep moving the bar on myself. There is always ‘just’ one more thing in academia. Just one more paper, one more term, one more book. Just one more year. During this time, children grow up, parents grow older, waistlines grow wider, friendships grow apart. 

This newsletter turned a bit dark, didn’t it? 

Here is the good news: I have come to realize that all thoughts are just that: thoughts. As with the thoughts that tell me to have chocolate for lunch or to order more clothes because of the 25% off this-weekend-only sale or to adopt another rescue cat, I choose what to do with the thought telling me it is worth it to sacrifice my current wellbeing. I can choose to believe it, ignore it, label it a lie. 

I now choose to see Baker Street thoughts as a helpful sign that I need a break. And when I find myself thinking this way, I take steps to create more space in my life.

My well-being today matters at least as much as my well-being tomorrow. And so does yours.

Okay: small idea time!

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: The Meeting Action Review

Given the choice between a gazillion dizzying emails going back and forth for days or a focused meeting, I choose the focused meeting, hands down. The trick is to make sure that the meeting is in fact focused. Ideally, by the end of the meeting, everyone is clear about what actions need to be taken and who is going to lead each action. 

One super-easy way to achieve this is to end each meeting with an “Action Review.”* Here is how it works:

1. Add the item “Action Review” to the last five minutes of the meeting agenda. 

2. Assign one person (not the meeting chair) the role of coordinator. The coordinator is responsible to take note of any action items identified during the meeting. 

3. At the end of the meeting, the coordinator reads this list aloud to the group. If there is an action without a lead identified to be responsible for its completion, the action is assigned to someone at that point. 

That’s all there is to it! This simple practice is a powerful way to ensure both that tasks are not forgotten by the end of the meeting and that all tasks have someone who is accountable for their completion.

For standing meetings, the Action Review can be adapted into an accountability tool. To do this, label the step “Action Review and Status Update”. At the end of the meeting, the coordinator asks individuals assigned with previous action items to update the group on their progress. Previous action items stay on the standing meeting agenda until they are completed. (Agenda structure as a form of nagging? Sweet!)

Here is an example adapted from a standing meeting I had this week; names altered for my own amusement. 

That’s all there is to it. Easy peasy! Give it a try (or ask whoever runs the meetings you participate in to give it a try) and let me know what you think. And if you don’t use agendas for meetings (?!?!?!), use this as your motivation to start!

* I learned about the Action Review idea from the book No Fail Meetings and then adapted it to fit my needs.

Chipping Away: What I Have Been Up To

A quick update on some of my own activities since my last newsletter, since I have your attention:

• For decades now, I have been studying regionalism in Canadian politics. My Viewpoint Alberta research team, for which I am co-principal investigator with University of Alberta colleague Jared Wesley, has begun working on a set of research briefs for our March 2021 surveys, which include a comparative Saskatchewan sample. For anyone interested in Canadian politics and/or political attitudes, please follow the Common Ground Project Twitter account for notification of report releases.

• One of my daughters and I have been watching the turn-of-the-century J.J. Abrams TV series Felicity and I am happy to report that it stands up to rewatching. Two faculty-related storylines made me cringe, however: in season one, a student dates her professor, and in season two, a professor sets Felicity up with her son. Yuck and hard NO to both. Fellow-Felicity fans may be interested to learn that while I was firmly Team Noel upon first viewing, I am firmly Team Ben during the rewatch. My daughter is firmly Team Neither.

• Spring is (thankfully) arriving on the Canadian prairie. My cat Bandit approves.

Until next time…

Did you find this newsletter useful? If yes, please spread the word and forward it to one person who you think would enjoy it. I am trying to build the audience for the newsletter and word of mouth would help so much. 

Until next time, please connect with me on Twitter at @loleen_berdahl where I tweet ideas about academic life using the hashtag #AcademiaMadeEasier. Also, if you have yet to read them, please check out my past newsletters, where I share easy ideas for how to say no to requests, how to spend less time in meetings, and how to transform grade discussions from negotiations to teaching opportunities. 

Stay well, my colleagues. 

PS. You are still here. Excellent. Are there elements of academic life you would like to hear more about in future newsletters? Do you have your own small easy ideas to make academia a little bit easier? Please leave a comment and let me know!

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Loleen Berdahl, PhD: I am a twin mother, wife, runner, cat lover, and chocolate enthusiast. I spend far too much time on Twitter and binge-watching television, and my house could be a lot cleaner. During the work hours, I am the Executive Director of the Johnston Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. I am the author of University Affair’s Skills Agenda column and my most recent books are Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD and Explorations: Conducting Empirical Research in Canadian Political Science.