I also draw a lot in meetings, and I too find it helps me concentrate (been doing it my whole life in church, school, watching tv, etc).
However it also looks incredibly rude and zoned out, but if I'm not doing it, I'll probably focus on the visual details of the person talking and my mind will wander to some random topic that comes to mind.
Anyone have any tricks to help them either not look rude, or to concentrate on some audio without wandering off during some topic?
Right now I'm at the point that I'd rather really pay attention than to look interested and have them repeat themselves.
But of course that only goes so far in business :P
> However it also looks incredibly rude and zoned out, but if I'm not doing it, I'll probably focus on the visual details of the person talking and my mind will wander to some random topic that comes to mind. Anyone have any tricks to help them either not look rude, or to concentrate on some audio without wandering off during some topic?
Work remotely :). Shit like this is why I transitioned out of the modern office and work 100% remotely. You could try somehow concealing what you're writing and look up every once in a while to look like you're taking notes. You're spot on that the visual details are a distraction. I concentrate better when I look at something boring, like a piece of paper. Perhaps this is why I find trying to take notes on a computer an exercise in futility.
A bit off topic, but if you care more about the optics of meetings rather than getting something out of it, here are a few "tips" [1]
* Translate % metrics into fractions and vice versa. Honestly, there are quite a few people who understand 1 in 4 better than 25%
* Tell everyone to "take a step back". This is genuinely useful when people start chiming in with comments or questions that should be taken offline. For bonus points, once you silenced the free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness that the meeting has devolved into, follow up with "What problem are we trying to solve here? BAM, you're the smart guy asking the "important" questions here.
* Ask "Will this scale", for everything. Especially if you know damn well that it's not appropriate to ask. For example, during a standup when Steve says "I just wrote a Chef script that leverages Vagrant and automates the provisioning of a dev environment, which..." cur him off and say "Aahhh, but will this scale?" Steve will be dumbfounded because he thought the whole point of doing this was to scale onboarding and say "he'll have to get back to you on that" while "you'll look smart".
* Repeat the last smart thing the someone said, but very very slowly. People will look back on the meeting and mistakenly attribute the intelligent statement to you.
These aren't jokes. This shit works. After reading "The Undoing Project" (a fantastic, yet depressing read about the weaknesses and limitations about how the human mind works, authored by Michael Lewis who also wrote Moneyball and The Big Short), I understand, somewhat, why these "tips" work.
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Work remotely :). Shit like this is why I transitioned out of the modern office and work 100% remotely. You could try somehow concealing what you're writing and look up every once in a while to look like you're taking notes. You're spot on that the visual details are a distraction. I concentrate better when I look at something boring, like a piece of paper. Perhaps this is why I find trying to take notes on a computer an exercise in futility.
A bit off topic, but if you care more about the optics of meetings rather than getting something out of it, here are a few "tips" [1]
* Translate % metrics into fractions and vice versa. Honestly, there are quite a few people who understand 1 in 4 better than 25%
* Tell everyone to "take a step back". This is genuinely useful when people start chiming in with comments or questions that should be taken offline. For bonus points, once you silenced the free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness that the meeting has devolved into, follow up with "What problem are we trying to solve here? BAM, you're the smart guy asking the "important" questions here.
* Ask "Will this scale", for everything. Especially if you know damn well that it's not appropriate to ask. For example, during a standup when Steve says "I just wrote a Chef script that leverages Vagrant and automates the provisioning of a dev environment, which..." cur him off and say "Aahhh, but will this scale?" Steve will be dumbfounded because he thought the whole point of doing this was to scale onboarding and say "he'll have to get back to you on that" while "you'll look smart".
* Repeat the last smart thing the someone said, but very very slowly. People will look back on the meeting and mistakenly attribute the intelligent statement to you.
These aren't jokes. This shit works. After reading "The Undoing Project" (a fantastic, yet depressing read about the weaknesses and limitations about how the human mind works, authored by Michael Lewis who also wrote Moneyball and The Big Short), I understand, somewhat, why these "tips" work.
[1] Shamelessly taken from https://medium.com/conquering-corporate-america/10-tricks-to...