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I don't mind a few scheduled meetings a week. I don't know about you, but I don't flat-out work the entire time I'm sitting at a desk, so not being there every so often isn't necessarily a productivity hit.

Obviously unfocused and overly general meetings are not good, but for reasonable ones, I find taking the headphones off and going to speak/listen to some human beings for a while to be rejuvenating.

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As a counterpoint, I find myself thoroughly drained after any meeting that goes for an hour or more. Put me in a two hour meeting first thing in the morning and I'm not going to produce anything useful that day; I'll pretty much be zombified for the rest of the day.

I figure it comes down to extroverts (recharged by interacting with others) vs introverts (drained by interacting with others).

I think everyone should agree that marathon meetings suck. Perhaps 45m max, with people free to leave if it's no longer relevant to them, is what I'd advocate.

I thought my word choice might bring up the intro/extro-vert thing, but I think someone needs to be a pretty extreme case to be flustered by a (reasonable length) meeting with people they already know and hopefully like. I don't really buy it.

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