The Mere Urgency Effect - Deepstash
How to Run an Effective Meeting

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How to Run an Effective Meeting

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The Mere Urgency Effect

When we are stressed, completing seemingly urgent (yet actually unimportant) tasks can provide some relief. This is known as the Mere Urgency Effect. Scheduling and attending meetings can make us feel like we’ve accomplished something, and so we’re often loath to decline or cancel them, even if they are objectively not as important as our other work.

This is often compounded by a strong sense of inertia: If we’ve always held a certain meeting at a certain time, it’s a lot easier to just keep doing that than to reevaluate whether it’s actually a good idea.

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MORE IDEAS ON THIS

Meeting FOMO

Meeting FOMO

As meeting participants, we worry that our colleagues will judge us — or worse yet, forget about us — if we don’t accept every invitation. Deeply ingrained norms around what it means to be an “ideal worker” lead us to equate presence with productivity and these a...

275

1.63K reads

Meeting Amnesia

Meeting Amnesia

Too often, we end up in the same bad meeting over and over again, just because no one remembers what was discussed in the last meeting. To avoid meeting amnesia, schedule a short five-minute team debrief after key internal and external calls. These debriefs are e...

261

518 reads

Meetings as Commitment Devices

Meetings as Commitment Devices

Sometimes we use meetings as commitment devices: that is, mechanisms to help make sure people follow through on their promises. An external deadline (like a meeting with your boss) can be an effective motivator — but the meeting itself is often unnecessary, with ...

264

637 reads

Pluralistic Ignorance

It refers to a phenomenon whereby even though we’re all experiencing the same thing, we assume that other people don’t feel the same way about it as we do. This bias leads us to continue to schedule and attend meetings even when everyone secretly agrees that they’re useless becau...

257

632 reads

Selfish Urgency

Leaders will schedule meetings whenever convenient for them, without necessarily considering their teams’ needs or schedules. Sometimes leaders even knowingly schedule meetings when their team has conflicts, forcing everyone to shift their calendars around to accommodate.

W...

253

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rylz

Geek that loves minimal and harmonious designs. I'm learning Japanese.

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