Meetings have always played a crucial role in the running of businesses and organizations across the globe, and with good reason; effective meetings can get all of your workers on the same page and ensure everyone knows what the business is aiming for and what their part in getting there is. Bad meetings, on the other hand waste time, confuse and bore people, and see your productivity plummet faster than an anvil in an old cartoon. 

With that being the case, let’s take a look at some things you should definitely NOT do if you want all of your future meetings to be fruitful, not pitiful!

Kick things off by selecting a venue that screams “boredom,” rather than a meeting location that makes your heart sing like Evins Mill does. Think windowless room, uncomfortable chairs, and lighting that’s reminiscent of an interrogation room. The more it feels like a storage closet, the better. You want your attendees to feel the life draining out of them the moment they step in.

Planning is for business amateurs, right? Dive right into your meeting without an agenda. This way, you can aimlessly wander through topics like a lost tourist without a map. Bonus points if you can change subjects abruptly and frequently. Keep them guessing – it’s more fun that way!

Why limit your meeting to only relevant personnel? Invite everyone! The more, the merrier – and the less productive. If possible, extend the invitation to pets too. A few barking dogs and curious cats can really liven up (read: derail) any meeting.

When it comes to presentations, the longer, the better. Aim for at least 100 slides. Each slide should be crammed with tiny text and indecipherable graphs. The goal is to have your audience squinting and snoozing in record time.

Ensure there’s at least 15 minutes of fumbling with the projector or video conferencing software. Nothing says “unproductive meeting” like watching someone struggle to find the right HDMI input. It’s the modern-day equivalent of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Encourage tangents. If someone starts talking about their weekend plans or the latest office gossip, let them. Who needs focus when you can discuss what happened on last night’s reality TV show in excruciating detail?

Ask everyone to keep their cell phones on. Text message notifications, ringtones, and email alerts are like the soundtrack to an unproductive meeting. It’s like trying to have a conversation in a pinball arcade.

Finally, make sure to end the meeting without any clear conclusions or action items. Leave everyone as confused and directionless as when they started. They’ll leave wondering what the point of the last hour was – and that, my friends, is the hallmark of an utterly fruitless meeting.

Follow these tips, and you’ll be the talk of the water cooler for all the wrong reasons, do the exact opposite of the above, and fruitful meetings will be very much in your life The choice if yours!