Meetings increase your breadth of knowledge.
Breadth without depth leads to imbalance and collapse.
If all the information you have are from meetings, you are a dangerously imbalanced person. Dangerous because what you know are facts without the depth of context.
Treat information in meetings like headlines. Factually correct, but sensational to get your attention. To gain understanding, you must go deep on the actual content, and most times you find that the headline is misleading.
Observe, explore, test, study, and notice things for yourself. Go deep on what triggers your curiosity from all the facts that get thrown at you.
The good thing is that if you go deep on one thing, at least four other things can be anchored on it.
One of the dangers as you grow up a hierarchy is that you are drawn into more meetings than actual work. This increases your breadth of knowledge, without a corresponding deepening of depth. This is why the Peter principle applies.
Meetings have value, but they cannot be the predominant function of your day.
– Osasu Oviawe
