How to Make Your Meetings Better

It's the last week of Team Taskmaster's run, and I'm rounding up some of the most helpful and popular posts from the past year and a half. On today's agenda: How to survive -- and even thrive -- when dealing with workplace meetings.

If you've been reading my posts for a while, you know my top pet peeve is wasteful or inefficient meetings, especially when they start stacking up like planes on a congested runway.

One way to avoid the curse of the adjacent booking is to end each meeting 10 minutes early. If Outlook makes you schedule a meeting for an hour, end the meeting at the 50-minute mark to give attendees time to "commute" to their next engagement.

If you find your attention slipping during a meeting, don't beat yourself up; just break out your sketching skills. Why? Because doodling can improve your concentration.

Don't forget your Emily Post guidelines even in a less-than-fab confab, of course; mind your meeting manners to help things go smoothly. (My number-one faux pas? Don't multitask in a meeting!) Avoid using corporate jargon -- it obscures clarity and makes it harder for everyone to understand what you're really saying.

Whenever possible, avoid subjecting your meeting invitees to death by PowerPoint. But if you must present a slide deck, check out these four scientific rules for improving your PowerPoint
And finally, observe these eight ways to avoid meeting hell. Your team will thank you.

Have any other suggestions for making your meetings better? Add them in the comments section!
(image by markhillary via Flickr, CC 2.0)