Book excerpt: A thousand days of meetings is your fate if you have an office job that averages one meeting a day for the whole of your career. There will be more meetings than that if you get promoted. The further up the corporate tree you climb, the more of your time will be spent in various types of meetings until the most agile, those with prehensile tails, who reach the very canopy of the tree, get to spend all day in meetings. It’s a sobering thought, and yet very few people spend any time learning about meetings, or even attending training courses about meetings, which would in effect be meetings about meetings. The people who run the training courses would probably even attend meetings about meetings about meetings. As meetings are so common you’d think that there would be a degree in meetings, or it would at least be taught in schools, but no, there is almost nothing out there by way of training or education. True, there are a few courses about not looking at your feet while delivering presentations, or even courses in facilitation, but I’ve never heard of one about the art of planning, organising, booking, participating, enduring, chairing, minuting and ending a successful meeting. That’s what this book is about. If it helps to make meetings more efficient, by reducing the number, reducing the length of meetings, making them more productive and harmonious, fun even, then it will be the most valuable book you ever read, if it saves a few productive hours. If I can save 10% of your time in meetings, then this book is worth 100 days of your working life, if you read it early enough in your career. That’s half your salary for a year. You should write me a cheque! Go on, get your cheque book out.