Sleeping Through Meetings

I was walking by one of my meetings and popped my head in to check and make sure everything was refreshed and looking good.  Our meeting space comfortably holds quite a crowd so frequent checks help insure we consistently have everything for our meeting goers.  In this case I had to stifle myself due to the man in the back of the room.   He was head down, arms crossed and I’m sure two breaths away from snoring. 

This really got me thinking.  I’ve been in meetings before that have been dry or tough to get through but I thank coffee or soda for getting me through those tough times, but how many people catch some Z’s in meetings? 

You can find in the news how council members sleep through meetings or Youtube videos of people falling asleep there is a ton of stuff showing people falling asleep in meetings.  So the guy in my meeting was not unusual but comical just like the girl in the video. 

So what is the reason for people falling asleep?  Is it a dry, monotone speaker, lack of sleep, not enough coffee?  If you find yourself in a meeting and need to stay awake here are a couple of tips to use to keep your peepers open:

•  Pretend to take notes. Writing things down will make you look fastidious, efficient and incredibly interested. Rather than notes, however, your pad of paper can be filled with an array of fun activities.

•  Play word games. This is as easy as picking a word, such as "corporate" and seeing how many other words you can make from the letters. "Corporate" gives you: rat, rate, poor, coop, crop and crap, just to name a few.

•  Count words. Certain speakers, in their monotone, may be prone to repeating certain words, utterance or phrases. It's fun and easy to count how many times Nancy in marketing says "newfangled," Vance in budget says "earmarked" or George from human resources utters "Um."

•  Rate neckties. Start with a list merely rating all the different ties in attendance from 1-10. The list can then be broken down to rate the most colorful, the most original and one you would do nothing but hang yourself with.

•  As mentioned, always keep one ear open to what the suits are rambling on about in case someone decides to ask your opinion.
•  Don't doodle. Doodling on your notepad may be fun, but someone is bound to glance over and note your pages are filled with eyeballs, smiley men or other funky little illustrations. Whatever you are writing cannot be read from far away.
•  If you must doodle, don't draw evil caricatures of the people in attendance. Someone is bound to see.
•  Don't play tic-tac-toe with the person next to you. That's just too obvious.