Last week in the Economist there was an article: “Why it’s time to get shot of coffee meetings at work“, with the subheader “A productivity hack for the ages”, with the idea coming from a time management book (sigh). I disagree so fervently with the whole premise that I nearly didn’t link to the article, but then reminded myself to be abundant 😉
I did read the article and two thoughts came through. First, hey folks, be abundant with your time! Second, and in recognition of the fact that time can be a precious resource, have some kind of context/focus/reason for a meeting. This context can be highly focussed or it can be high level, but having a context of some kind is valuable. For example, even when catching up with a friend or colleague you know well, it is always valuable to ask them what is top of mind for them right now, as well as to share the same for yourself.
Another way of putting context is “Why” as in the coffee cup image above.
To that point, when I moved to London in mid-2017 I did not know too many people in the city, so I simply adopted a focus on “meeting interesting people doing interesting things”. That is my context, my “why” for otherwise random coffee meetings.
A current example is that I glanced at LinkedIn the other day and saw someone new had followed me in order to read my daily blog posts (I repost them on LinkedIn). As I was on that site, I glanced at their profile and found the things they were focussed on were fascinating to me. They are an interesting person doing interesting things. I, therefore, contacted them and asked to meet, thanking them for reading my writings and also noting two things in particular that they are giving time and focus to that I would like to ask them more about. We are meeting later this week, for coffee. I very much look forward to it and I am certain it will be a great use of time for both of us!
In closing, a little more on what you can do to make sure your coffee meetings are a great use of your time is to be intentional with your time. in which blog post I linked to a great article on how the founder of Spotify does this. Very much worth investing the time in that “long read” article.
I do love coffee meetings, and I am also intentional with them. Perhaps the author of that time management book and the writer of the Economist article could view coffee meetings differently if they are more intentional with their own time.