As we can all attest, business meetings often waste valuable productive time and tend to last far longer than they should. But until we learn to communicate telepathically, they will remain a necessary evil---not just as a means of exchanging ideas and information---but also as a way to build relationships with others. 

That doesn't mean we have to like them.

In fact, as economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell once quipped, "People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything." Whether he meant it facetiously or not, there's a grain of truth in Sowell's statement, since someone who enjoys meetings might actually prolong them and anything else they laid their hands on. 

Sowell himself has wasted little time in making the most of his life. Born African-American in the Deep South in 1930, he was raised by his extended family; his father died before his birth, and his mother was forced to give him up. After dropping out of high school at age 17 for financial and family reasons, he took a number of jobs before entering the Marine Corps in 1951 to fight in the Korean War. Later he joined the civil service and took night classes at Howard University until he had enough credits to enter Harvard. After receiving his bachelor's degree in economics in 1958, magna cum laude , he went on to acquire a master's at Columbia and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1968. Since then, he's become known as one of the nation's top economists, having been mentored by George Stigler and Milton Friedman. Sowell clearly understand the value of time: nothing damages productivity worse than wasted time. It's no wonder meetings are described as the place, "Where minutes are taken and hours are wasted."

Easing Inevitability

You may never learn to enjoy meetings, but you can certainly make them more tolerable with these tips: