You suffer from ...

(copyright: The New York magazine)

the disease of compulsively scheduling meetings if:  

1. your reponse to everything is to create a meeting.

2. if in a meeting you derail from the topic of discussion the meeting was created for.

3. if you continue the meeting after some invitees have already joined other meetings, and your conclusion is to set another meeting so that you can discuss what it was supposed to be talked in this meeting.

4. once this new meeting has started, you start talking about what it was described in point number 2. And this is how you end up tired and surprised you are tired.

 

The moral – when you have something to clarify, a short meeting is better than sending 10-15 emails. The idea is not to transform the meeting into a background noise tool, during which employees must work because otherwise there’s no time to solve the work tasks.

 

I think it is important for employees not to have their work schedules crammed with meetings, so that they could pay more attention to their tasks.

And the most important thing of all – to keep a pragmatic perspective regarding the topics to be discussed during a meeting and the points that should be verified in case issues appear. Short and to the point is how the meetings should unfold so that people don’t leave them drained of energy.

 

Why do I give the aforementioned advice? I am the survivor (fortunately, not the only one) of a six consecutive hours monthly meeting. Thus, here I am being able to tell the story and give recommendations.

The Physics of Sorrow - Gheorghi Gospodinov

An excerpt:

‘We look at each other. Between us there are 60 years and a man she remembers when he was 25, and which I just buried a couple of months ago, at the age of 82. And there is no common language we can speak to tell each other everything.’

Sadly, I have a scarce knowledge of the Bulgarian literature. Except for the name of Hristo Botev, whose poetry I have not read, I know nothing about the Bulgarian literature. Actually, this is why when I am on holiday I try to buy books from national authors. Unfortunately, in Romania, books of authors belonging to literatures less promoted are not published.

And I must admit, I bought this book not because I was interested in its subject but because it is written by a Bulgarian author. And the suprise was even bigger when I was enchanted by it, discovering an easy and simple style (the latter is the hardest to obtain in writing).

The starting point is the myth of the Minotaur and the writer weaves a lot of threads around it, more or less symbolic, with views from different realities someone can discover a myth from – family life, adolescence, first loves, disappointments, and expectations. But the greatest of these threads is the memory. I could not but think about the motto that ignited in me the will to write, that motto at the beginning of the O.K. novel by Maria Arsene – Please do remember that the memory must be given as a legacy. So that it does not die together with you. Please remember! Please remember!

The writer plays also with the mind of the reader; he provokes the reader to get out of the labyrinth that she/ he usually stays when reading a book and being blinded by the action while trying to make out the meaning (and thus the exit from the labyrinth).

When one finishes the novel, one needs a couple of moments to come back to one’s senses. One has met with the absolute and coming back to reality may be difficult. And if I ever had a doubt, the writer Gheorghi Gospodinov has just wrecked it – there are threads that we cannot see but connect us all to everything.

Aggression

There are a couple of things that I can’t stand, and one of them is aggression. Moreover, it steps on my nerves to see that people using aggression are sure they will convince me.

I am a rather stubborn human being, aware of the passage of time and I don’t like to loose my time or to cause somebody to loose theirs. So when my phone rang and a lady told me I am the client of the month (it wasn’t really clear on what she supported this assumption) and they thought about calling me and telling me about a campaign they had for health insurance, I politely declined mentioning that I do not want to waste her time.

The lady easily regrouped and asked me about the reason for my rejection. There was no need for further explanations so I told her I was not interested and that I wished her a good day. She talked over me and asked me the following question: are you one of those that consider that insurance should be made only when in need?

Here it was where I ended the conversation, I thanked her and ended the call. But I cannot help to draw  some conclusions/ statements about this conversation:

The scripts they use for guidance when talking with clients need updating. Obviously!

It’s rude enough that you invade my time, but you must also insult me for being one of the harebrained?!

It’s not nice to talk down to someone. I am the only one who should decide if I want another type of health insurance and what I do with my money.

Do they really sell by having this atitude?

 

I understand that people working in sales must be more assertive, but let’ not forget that one catches more flies with honey.

Soothing

Request

I cannot take it anymore. I've dealt with it as much as possible, but truth must be put out in the open.

Please stop! Stop taking pictures of yourselves with your arms crossed, in an attempt to convey the message that you are serious and professional. This body posture is outdated and it doesn’t even convey the aforementioned.

But what it does convey is lack of originality and, according to the decoding of body language, a barrier towards the interlocutor/ viewer, and also a very clear ‘I’m not interested’.

 

Thus, please (pretty please) stop taking pictures of yourselves with arms crossed or stop advising people to take pictures in this posture. A picture is worth a thousand words, so why should you convey the message that you are boring, not at all innovative and unsure about the message you want the public to receive?!  

Words used to create a gong-like effect

I do not know if we find it more and more difficult to express ourselves due to so many technologies nowadays that facilitate so many things for us, among which communication, but I cannot but notice a tendency to use words that do not support understanding and create some smog. Nothing new, this has been done for some time now, but not as often as this, I daresay. In the language that we speak daily, we use acronyms or words coming from the english language that we adopted too easily, I would say. And I remark the difficulty to say an entire sentence in a correct Romanian – ok there is no news here, too.

What puzzles me even more is the increase in using gong-words. What are those?!

When one does not know what to say (maybe not enough vocabulary or knowledge on the subject), but one has to or wants to comment, then one uses a gong-word. Its role is to emotionally unsettle the interlocutor, that sometimes starts to wonder if they had grasped everything that was on the subject.

 

Here below are the most used gong-words that I noticed, but I am sure there are more:

• interesting - this one has a lot of meanings; I sometimes find it used when someone does not like/ does not understand the thing they are talking about and so they qualify it as interesting
• splendid
• wow - haven’t you heard about the wow element?! No? You lucky people, you!
• why not?! – for a long time, I thought this was almost yes; but I learned that it is, actually, an embellished no and that one will figure this as time goes by

 

And far be it from me to think I am better than everyone and to point fingers. I have already surprised myself a couple of times using the word interesting. But I wanted to put this into writing, so that the gong-words trick can be exposed.

Floriography. An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers – Jessica Roux

When it comes to flowers, one thing is for sure – I do not know how to take care of them (but I must admit that I haven’t even tried to learn).

No gifted flower in a pot survived me more than two months. Little George, a cactus, owns this title and great honor. Moreover, I do not know the names of flowers (aside from freesia, which I absolutely adore), but this book proved to be interesting to me.

 

Aside from the significance of every flower presented in the book and the flowers with which one could combine it in order to obtain a bunch (which also has a significance; the detective in me loved this), the illustrations are marvelous. One almost expects to feel the perfume of the flowers while looking at their illustrations.

 

I must admit, from now on, I will look at any bunch of flower differently than before, trying to find the message behind it.

Martisor

Mărțișor is the old folk name for March in the Romanian language, and literally means "little March".

When my nephew was a little boy, he went with his father to buy Martisor for all the girls and women he knew. When they got close to a stand, my nephew chose the Martisor for me. ‘But it’s golden, so I don’t think she will like it’, his father said. ‘No, she likes it’, replied my nephew.

And so I did. And I have ever since. It seems to me to be the everlasting Martisor from him.