How to tell supervisor too many lengthy meetings are hurting your productivity?

Question

My supervisor wants us to meet 3-5 times in a week with another PhD student of his. Every meeting is on average more than couple of hours. I don't know about the other student. But I feel like we are wasting too much time in meeting; it's hurting my productivity. How can I tell my supervisor to keep the amount of meetings and duration limited? To make matter worse, he also wants us (me and other PhD student) to meet separately besides these meetings. I am spending on avg. 12-15 hours per week doing these meetings.

I can answer questions why I think these meetings aren't productive, but that may turn into rant and I may put them into another question. So I want to keep it short and precise; let's just assume these meetings aren't productive for me.

Answer 1

I think this is a time to be direct and honest: just say you are spending too much time in meetings and it should be reduced. Say what you should be doing instead. A reasonable person should not be offended and should know that meetings can hurt productivity.

I also recommend considering changing the way the meeting works to align it with your needs. When I am in a meeting, if nobody is taking charge, I will try to be a leader and give the meeting some direction. Remind participants of the agenda. Add the things you want to do to the agenda. But be tactful.

Answer 2

Volunteer to prepare the agenda for these meetings. The day before, send everyone email asking for agenda items. If you get none, suggest to your supervisor that the meeting be canceled as there are no items to discuss.

If you do get items, make sure "Adjournment" is the last item on the agenda.

Edited to add: There are two groups for whom time is literally money. They physicians and lawyers. I spent my first career working for one such group. I learned that meetings need not be a time sink. As I've said in a comment, the way to make meetings productive is to have an agenda and stick to it. Meetings run by people who know what they're doing accomplish what they are supposed to accomplish and stop. This is what Anonymous Physicist and Dave Clark called "aligning the meeting with your needs."

One of the things that chaps my buns about academia is waste-of-time meetings. Happily, I am low on the academic totem pole and not tenure-track, so I can blow most of them off.

Another edit: I never had a meeting with my own dissertation chair that did not have an agenda. I prepared them and he seemed happy to have them. Early meetings were formal and ended when we reached the end of the agenda. Toward the end we met at a Chinese restaurant and the meeting gave way to lunch, but we never rambled.

Last edit, I promise: What I am suggesting is the difference between telling the advisor/supervisor that the meetings do not fulfill the needs of OP and telling the advisor/supervisor that, but following up with a suggestion that my experience says will improve the meetings and may result in fewer of them.

Answer 3

I think it unlikely that you will convince them to reduce the number of meetings; from my experience, people do not realise that you can do with less, until they have experienced the productivity boost themselves. In my experience, requests for fewer meetings are typically turned down by people who believe in the management model that regular meetings act as engine of progress.

If it is a purely scientific rather than a "waffle" meeting, though, then I recommend, just enjoy it. That's what you are in university for, after all.

But if the meeting is really unproductive (which means, it doesn't advance neither your direct work, nor your knowledge), then this is a classic instance for "manage your manager". Avoid directly criticising the number/style of meetings. Even at more advanced stages than a PhD, one will be looked at a person that is not ready to play ball.

Rather, be proactive: By you deciding what you want out of the meeting, preparing an agenda, preparing a list of expected outcomes, and writing down a mandatory "action list" at the end (which is checked against at the beginning of the following meeting), you can focus the meetings and help organise the thoughts of your fellow participants. You have a certain control of the agenda, this way.

If you push on the action list in a disciplined form, especially if you yourself act with discipline on it, but it not acted upon by the others, it may make the others in the meeting uncomfortable and lead them, in turn, to ask for fewer meetings on their own. Plus, you will be seen as manager/organizer of the meeting, and a disorganised supervisor may actually appreciate that, if it's done in a careful way. Don't castigate others for not doing theirs, just ask them if they have done their part.

Answer 4

Since my comments trigger such negative rating, I might as well turn this into an answer :-)

The point I would like to make is focussed on the fact that you complain about your supervisor spending ten hours a week wanting to talk to you. I would like to say, as a former supervisee and a current supervisor, that you should consider yourself a priori lucky. Now it might be that your supervisor is also clueless, this I cannot judge. But think of this in the following way: the PhD is the last time in your life where you are being tought, in particular tought about how to do research, something books are not so good at doing. Should you consider a career in your field, you will have plenty of time to focus on being productive.

Think of your PhD -- and of the time your supervisor is spending helping you go through it, as an investment for future productivity. Of course you will most likely be faced with endless numbers of essentially boring meetings in your life. You might feel it is already the case, but a meeting with your supervisor should not be of this type. My advice would be change the nature of the meeting, not the number of hours dedicated to them.

On the more general issue of being productive in research, personally I do not feel research is about productivity. Engineering might be, but engineering is not quite the same as research. Some people obviously think differently, which is fine by me.

Answer 5

Tips on approaching your supervisor:

1. Offer an alternative to the meetings: Perhaps meeting once a month, or a "lunch and learn". This sets you up as a solution oriented person rather than a "complainer".

2. Give specific instances of what is not productive. I measure the value of a meeting on whether I changed something I do because of the meeting. If I did not change, then the meeting did not have an effect on me and the value of the meeting is questionable.

3. Ask for an agenda for the meeting. This will force the person hosting the meeting to organize what they will talk about.