Tim Minchin’s lyrics in the song “Loud ” from Matilda the Musical are scarily relevant in our day to day lives at the moment.

People don’t like smarty-pants
What go round claiming
that they know stuff
we don’t know.

Now, here’s a tip:
What you know matters less
Than the volume with which
What you don’t know’s expressed!

Content, has never been less important.
So you have got to be…
Loud!

The context of the theatrical narrative is missing of course. In the musical this is sung by Matilda’s mother, who’s one of the baddies. However, I’m sure many of you can reconcile this with your recent experiences!

In many situations and environments today, if you want to convince someone, it’s often more efficient to be loud, than it is to be right. Make a big spectacle and if you can, pick one small aspect of the other person’s argument and make it sound ridiculous or offensive. You can do this online, in a newspaper, but also in a face to face conversations. It works best when there are multiple people following the conversation, as it is an incredibly effective strategy to grab a lot of attention and to get people to think that they agree with you.

Being loud takes on different forms in different situations. In a face to face discussion someone can increase the volume at which they deliver their arguments. In a real-life conversation, especially when multiple people are involved, it’s also often quite hard to find the right moment to start making your argument without interrupting someone and feeling like you’re being rude. I’m often amazed that some people seem to be able to talk forever without having to take a breath. If it wasn’t so frustrating you’d almost admire them and advise them to take up free diving!

On the Internet loudness takes on slightly different forms. It can include personally attacking the person you are supposed to be having a discussion with. The attack doesn’t have to be related to the arguments that they are using, it is also quite common to attack part of someone’s personality and/or intelligence. Taking valid arguments completely out of context and stripping them of all nuances can be very effective as well and this can be very hard to defend yourself against. After all, you did use the argument. There was a lot more to it than what you’re being attacked over, but seeing as you’re trying to reason your way out of this, instead of countering by also being loud you won’t be able to grab the same amount of attention. Taking the time to consider the nuances and dig into facts and logic is harder and not “cool”. Which makes it less popular with the masses.

As a reaction to the bleak picture painted above it can be tempting to unleash your frustration about not being able to get your point across for reasons that feel unfair onto someone who’s loud. Letting yourself go when it’s normally not your style won’t make your feel good though. In fact, in most cases it will make you feel worse.
This might be a reference that only resonates with a specific audience, but I’m going to use it anyway. Meg Ryan’s character in the film, “You’ve Got Mail”, is frustrated about her mind going blank and not being able to come up with snide remarks when she’s being provoked. But when she is finally able to come up with zingers during a conversation the way she’s always dreamt of, she feels terrible afterwards.
When you reply to a loud person by being loud you become the very thing you dislike. By resorting to ignoring the nuance of someone’s arguments, or by trying to offend someone you lower your standards.

Wouldn’t it be inspiring if people that are able to construct arguments based on reason and who are normally calm, collected and polite, would in fact remain calm, collected and polite? Most people who are currently being loud won’t care about any eloquent and fact-based arguments. But wouldn’t you feel more hopeful about the future, if in heated face to face conversations more people would stay calm and polite, even when provoked? If in derailed social media discussions, you would find some classy and factual replies amidst all the loudness?

More importantly, wouldn’t you feel better about yourself if you were able to stay polite and just show an appropriate amount of emotion. Expressing some emotion is good, because it shows that you care. I’m not advocating that we should start acting as robots. On the contrary even. I would like us to put more emphasis on the fact that we are engaged and caring human beings.
I think I would feel good about myself if I would be able to be reasonable and kind, so I’m going to try to put this into practice. Perhaps the only difference I can make is to lift my own spirits. But there is always a chance that my attitude and intentions inspire someone else and together we can make a bigger difference.

I love my job. It’s great to work with our smart and dedicated people, I enjoy the challenge and there is enough variety to make sure it’s never boring. The one thing that I dread sometimes is having days with more than five hours of meetings. I don’t believe this can be useful or productive for anyone. On top of that, it freaks me out.

I don’t mind working hard at all, but I like to have some control over my life (even on a day to day basis :-)). Having full days of meetings makes me feel like I have none, which in turn generates stress. Another challenge with these back to back meetings is that with every one of them I’ll have less energy and it becomes harder to concentrate. As an introvert, I need quiet time to recharge. An hour in between meetings to do some work and listen to some music does wonders, but quite often I’ll be lucky to have 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon without meetings. Just enough to take a bathroom break and get a tea.

Two months ago, I started to try and change this pattern by critically reviewing my calendar and the meetings in it. When I see that a day is filling up I block time to ensure there will at least be some time to recharge a bit during the day. Below are 5 tips that I have found to work so far and that have greatly improved my productivity and the quality of my work days. Both from my perspective and judged by the output I’m able to generate. If you feel like your calendar is running your life, you might find some of them useful.

1. Evaluate all recurring meetings that you have
Do you have an active role in these meetings, or are you there to listen in? If it’s the latter, what value does listening in add? Does it help you to do your job better, or are you there to make someone else feel good about the fact that you are in the meeting? Or are you only there, because the meeting was in your calendar? If the meeting doesn’t add value to your life or work, remove it from your calendar. Don’t just remove the next instance, but remove the series. If there is an instance of the meeting where it would be valuable for you to be there someone can send you the invite for that particular instance of the meeting. And if they don’t you’ll have some more time to do work.

2. Every meeting needs an agenda
When someone plans a meeting without a clear agenda ask them to create an agenda before you accept the meeting. Based on the agenda you can determine whether that meeting will indeed be your highest priority at that particular time. Consider if the topic of the meeting can maybe be handled over email instead of by dragging people into a meeting. If the timing is inconvenient don’t feel bad about proposing a different time for the meeting. Whenever you feel the meeting is too long or too short, propose to change the amount of time scheduled for the meeting. If people that you feel are critical to the meeting are not invited, make sure they get the invite. In case you are not the right person to discuss the topic with point the organizer to the right person or people and decline the meeting. Don’t spend 30 minutes discussing who should be discussing the topic at hand. You have better things to do, even if it’s just taking a bio break.

3. Align on the purpose of the meeting
Make sure that everyone knows what the purpose of the meeting is and that there is an agreement on what the desired result of the meeting is. That way you know for sure that the people in the meeting are all working towards the same goal. If someone disagrees with the purpose, or the desired result, they can indicate this upfront, so that it can be tackled before or at the beginning of the meeting. To avoid what Tim Minchin describes as “being like two tennis players trying to win a match by hitting beautifully executed shots from either end of separate tennis courts” (http://www.timminchin.com/2013/09/25/occasional-address/).

4. Preparation is key
Send out homework before the meeting, or if it’s not your meeting ask the organizer how the participants can prepare for the meeting. By making sure everyone in the meeting is prepared it can be a lot shorter and the outcome will most likely be more valuable. If it’s not possible to explain how people can prepare for the meeting rethink the purpose of the meeting and whether a meeting is the right format to tackle the issue or task. Maybe more thinking needs to be done before it makes sense to have a meeting? Are there still prerequisites unclear that mean that it’s too early to call for a meeting? Then postpone the meeting.

5. Meeting or email?
If you are running a completely virtual meeting, make sure you only invite the people who really need to be there. Then during the meeting make sure everyone can play an active role. If you are a participant in a virtual meeting decide whether you will join the meeting, or work on your email. By combining the meeting and your email you won’t be paying attention to the conversation in the meeting, you’ll get tired from hearing it anyway and you will be less efficient answering email. Avoid the old “could you repeat the question, you were breaking up” excuses. Isn’t it amazing, how there’s always static on the line just when that one question is being asked?

Be hard on yourself and others before organizing or accepting a meeting. Quite often we are in meetings that could have been a lot shorter, or that could have been handled through a simple email exchange. Of course, having face to face time with people is valuable, but make sure that it’s a useful way of everybody’s time. Over the last years, we have gone a bit “meeting crazy”. Having all these meetings is not only tiring and inefficient, it quite often also means that real work that has real deadlines cannot be done during the day. This work then moves to the evening, which should be your time to relax and do other things instead of work. By not having downtime we become tired, less efficient and less productive and eventually unhappy. Claim back some of your time and help others to do the same. It will be worth the effort!