BREAKFAST MEETINGS AND TIME MANAGEMENT

Off and on, I have been a little active in politics. It seems like there is this bloodlust in politics to have breakfast meetings, campaign meetings, fund raisers, grant pitches. I have never completely understood this fixation with breakfast meetings in both government and politics.

For years, I vaguely suspected this was not a very effective way for an organization or for me, to do business but I could never put a really sharp point on that feeling. The conversation would always go "Let's meet for breakfast--then we have the whole day to follow through..." For about 20 years, I was game.

One day, I was in a friend's office in another state. He was taking a phone call and being appointed to a very prestigious bar committee. He was thanking the chairman for the appointment when the talk turned to business.....there was a pause. Then I heard my friend say: "Well, Ed, then I'm going to have to decline. I simply don't do breakfast meetings, no matter how good the cause. They just don't fit in with the way I plan my day." Boom, line in the sand. End of story.

I couldn't wait for my friend to get off the phone to ask him why. I knew it wasn't sleep. He's a very early riser, on his treadmill by 0530.

"If you get to the office in the morning and you read the paper or talk sports with your colleagues first thing, your day starts out on something that is not the most important thing to you. You will struggle the rest of the day. As the first half hour of your business day goes, so goes the rest of your day, and sometimes the rest of your week. If that's not bad enough, there is nothing worse than a meeting without an agenda. You've probably noticed that nobody bothers to make an agenda for a breakfast meeting. As a result, the breakfast meeting, no matter how urgent its purpose, turns into a gab fest and is not the best use of your time"

He added some other thoughts (commuting is a big deal in his hometown) but I was convinced. That was 1989. I have been to precisely one breakfast meeting since and that was to give an award to a friend of mine, which was probably the best use of my time for that day.

I don't even make excuses anymore. I just tell people I don't do breakfast meetings. They may be great for other people's feeling of "doing something" but they don't allow me to work at my best. The "rest of the day" theory is hollow for me because it's the rest of substandard performing day.