Frequently, of an evening, I get into the following exchange.
‘Did you have a good day at school?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you get up to?’
‘The usual. Lessons. And you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you get up to?’
‘Meetings.’
I exaggerate only slightly. My working life is composed of vast quantities of meetings; with members, with staff, with visitors, alone or in larger numbers, and the hard-working and long-suffering members of my secretariat make a lot of effort to squeeze more meetings into each day. I’m not complaining. A lot of these meetings are very interesting or great fun or both. Also, pace Peter F. Drucker (who once said ‘there are meetings, and then there is work’), all of my meetings are productive because I long ago learnt the trick of making sure of that. That said, the sheer frequency and number of these meetings inevitably means that undistracted reading and undistracted thought get pushed to the extremes – that is, very early in the morning, late in the evening, or at weekends – or, worse, they get neglected. Carving out ‘quality time’ for proper reflection is one of the major challenges of the job. The meetings phenomenon also poses a challenge for me with regard to this blog. I have to be selective in any case, but I can’t keep explaining that I was in yet another meeting. But if you don’t hear from me for a while, that’s where I’ll be; in a meeting!
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