Friday, June 22, 2012

Defeating Boredom in Long Meetings

Claire Suddath has a funny column at Business Week on how to cope with boredom at long management meetings.   Among the best coping strategies listed, she provides this story from Marcy, a former employee of the federal government:

“The M&M game is designed for a large-scale, all-hands-on-deck type meeting where you’re not expected to participate,” she explains. She and her friend would each get a packet of peanut M&M’s and then sit on opposite ends of the conference room, but within eye contact of each other. “We’d pick a set of buzzwords ahead of time—like ‘mission-driven,’ ‘nonproliferation,’ ‘efficiency,’ or ‘the president’—and then whenever one was used, we’d eat an M&M. If you finished your bag of M&M’s, you won.” This, my friends, is the American government in action.

I think that I'll try this strategy with a few colleagues here at the university.  I'm sure that we can come up with some terrific academic buzzwords to fuel our M&M appetites!  

1 comment:

Tom_KY said...

We do a "drinking game" even though it's just water. But when you get one of the buzzwords, several people around the room all drink at the same time. It is so funny, we may stop doing it, because the snorts from people trying to hold in a laugh are becoming too obvious.