Are we stretching ourselves too thin?

Over the weekend, a friend reminded me of the importance of sleep. Sleep is a funny thing. We all know about REM and NREM sleep, and of the five (recently four) stages of sleep. Fundamentally, sleep is stage-based. You go through the early stages of sleep before getting into deeper quality stages of sleep we all love.

If you get interrupted in the early stages of sleep - a loud sound, a bump on your bed or more commonly among my colleagues, a crying baby - you don't just start from where you left off. You start over from Stage 1.

In the past twenty years or so, there has been a major shift in the way we work. With the rise of more globalised economies and rapid advance in technology, the idea of a traditional workplace is growing obsolete. Increasingly, work is now more agile, flexible and connected. Unfortunately, the modern workplace remains prone to all kinds of interruptions.

Jason Fried, Co-Founder and President of 37signals, a Chicago-based technology company, held a controversial TED talk in 2010 disregarding office meetings and terming them as an 'unnecessary interruption' that extensively impairs productivity.

He compared work to sleep; 'Does anyone here expect someone to sleep well if they're interrupted all night? I don't think anyone would say yes. Why then expect people to work well if they're being interrupted all day at the office?'. Jason's bold talk then highlights what he thinks are the main culprits of all modern workplace interruptions, the M&Ms - managers and meetings.

While I find Jason's talk bordering on the extreme, I see some truth in what he's trying to say. Looking past his theatrics, meetings were intended to be the engine of productivity, a way for people to get together to discuss ideas, debate issues, overcome obstacles and drive outcomes. But often, despite large efforts to get organised and prepare agendas, meetings run off track and as a result waste valuable time.

In a global organisation like RMIT, meetings are often necessary and quite simply, inevitable. What we're left with is quite a unique problem here. We need to have our meetings. But at the same time, we need large amounts of uninterrupted time to work, to be creative and to be strategic.

How can we remain agile and efficient?

One of the innovative solutions I've come across recently is the Meeting-Free Day. One day every fortnight where everyone is encouraged to free themselves from any meetings at all (unless absolutely critical of course). This meeting-free day forces you to organise meetings provides them with the much needed time to themselves to think, create, solve, plan and make decisions without interruptions. The idea is popular among many companies including Google, where staff are able to organise meetings without disrupting their individual workflows.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Would an experimental meeting-free day work at RMIT? Or do we have other innovative solutions in our community? Leave a comment or participate in our anonymous poll below.

Would an experimental meeting-free day work at the International Portfolio?

Yes

No

Poll Maker

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Joshua Lee is International Relations Officer at RMIT University. An international student from Malaysia, he is currently working at RMIT as part of a WIL course in his International Business program. Josh has spent the last 2 years, working at various technology startups in Melbourne, pushing to innovate civic engagement and participation in Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia.