How I overcame awful meetings
Surely, I am not the only one who wasted lots of hours in unproductive meetings. The last year has completely changed our way of working since things mainly happened online in Marketing & Advertising. Switching to online sessions instead of the physical ones wasn’t a big deal because we were already familiar with Zoom, Meet, Teams, and other online video conferencing tools. And at the very beginning, things went smoothly. But then, day by day, other meetings appeared, and our calendar had fewer available slots to accommodate the clients’ demands.
No one liked it. The more meetings we had, the more stressed we became, and more often than not, there were no takeaways afterward. With many missing documents and unshared resources, setting up these meetings meant wasting a lot of time. We were tired; we had many tasks that we couldn’t handle because of these unorganized meetings. Worse, we didn’t even realize how painful the situation was until some of us experienced burnout.
A solution was needed, and it was very obvious: becoming organized. There are many myths about how creative departments work — super chaotic — because creativity means having a lot of ideas, right? This is not true. Without an agenda, things are forgotten. The most inefficient departments are the ones in which chaos runs, and we couldn’t allow ourselves to become one of those departments. I have never been an unorganized person because I need clarity, and I need to simplify things.
A few months into these painful situations, the solution came to us — an all-in-one collaborative toolbox that gives me & my team the freedom back. This toolbox has everything in it — from agenda to every functionality I used in a meeting — slideshows, videos, polls, notes, whiteboard, voting section, and so on. It allows us to work smoothly and organized, no longer bound to the unpredictability of meetings. The solution is called Sessions.
Sessions itself is a startup whose core mission is to improve meetings throughout their entire life cycle, from designing a logical flow and a more time-efficient agenda to making sure follow-ups are taken forward after the presentation.
How does it do it?
Sessions uses “Artifacts,” ready-to-use agenda blocks that you can include in any meeting to improve time management and minimize distractions. The artifacts serve multiple purposes, from keeping the presentation interactive to preserving the information and documents used in Sessions over a long period of time, acting as a “virtual memory.” Efficiency is essential while discussing with someone whose time is usually scarce and expensive, so Sessions enables the centralization of resources for easier access and, in the process, eliminates wasted time switching between apps.
With Sessions, I get ownership over my time by setting the ground for a productive meeting and really following through with the agenda. No more off time during meetings also means more time off the computer which I view as a significant advantage of the platform.
Sessions is time-saving and, ultimately, life-saving. I could further elaborate on that, but for a limited time, you get to experience it for yourself. Sessions is providing free lifetime access to the premium plan if you are willing to test the tool and offer feedback (until 20th of July).
One thing is clear — we all get the same 24 hours in a day, and how we decide to use them really matters. My life has significantly improved once I got rid of deadbeat meetings, and I wouldn’t ever go back.
Find out more about Sessions here: https://sessions.flowos.com
