The idea of being on a debate all day long instead of actually doing something productive has always bothered me. I normally get bored really quickly when the conversation starts getting away from the problem in question. My attention is attracted by my phone where I can read whatever interest me while avoiding the pointless deafening sound my teammates generate in the discussion room.

They can spend limitless hours talking about the same without getting to the point. Even the smallest problem can generate very long talks that end at the very end of the day just to the next morning we arrive to the office find out that we are in the position we were two days ago. We now need to start again, yet I can assure you there is a good article to read while this is happening.

Every single time we finish we say there is not point to have these long sessions and then all of the sudden, we need another time to discuss the reason of why we ended here once again.

We are generating this continuous debate and everyone seems to like it. They are passionate about all this and they put a lot of effort to resolve the conflict. What they don’t understand is that we need to stop this continuous flow of idle time. What we need to do is minimize the time we spend debating to maximize our productivity.

Many will argue about how important these meetings are, how efficient we are going to be after them. However, the question should be how efficient and productive are we right now?

There should be a rule that says no meeting, discussion or debate should be longer than 30 mins. If it cannot be resolved within that time frame, we should break and continue at another moment. This idea guarantees that we can actually get something done besides having meetings along the day. It also provides a framework for analyzing the problem from the outside, with a cold mind while being objective.

I wish people understood that there are others (like myself) that cannot be seated in the same place listening to nonsenses for the third time in the week. Looking at our phones, leaving the room for a while, or distracting ourselves is only a way of self isolation from a conversation we are forced to be in.

If there is nothing we can offer and we already know what is happening, why should we be required to participate? Shouldn’t empowerment be one of our main pillars of the team? Then why is there people getting offended because my eyes are focused on my phone while my participation in pointless and endless debates?

Let’s focus on being creative instead of over analyzing everything. Let’s have the space to produce instead of wasting it with such meaningless conversations. Let’s call ourselves out in order to interrupt the vicious, endless debate cycles.