{"id":2567,"date":"2014-02-12T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/?p=2567"},"modified":"2014-02-18T09:42:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T09:42:49","slug":"the-mosquito-and-the-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/the-mosquito-and-the-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"The mosquito and the meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The night before the start of an important 3 day meeting.<\/p>\n

At 2am.<\/p>\n

A mosquito arrives.<\/p>\n

Buzzing my ears.<\/p>\n

I tried some things suggested by colleagues (catching it with the light off, looking for it with the light on, putting a light on in another room to attract it\u2026). None of them seemed to work \u2013 but maybe there was more than one mozzie! The next night I would be fine \u2013 with an anti-mosquito machine to plug in and infuse the room with smelly vapour.<\/p>\n

But on this night\u2026? Before a crucial meeting? An event was already on my mind\u2026<\/p>\n

I decided to ignore it – and even sort of welcome it and the warm night it was part of. I drifted back to sleep – a buzzy, dozy sort of sleep.<\/p>\n

The lesson? When we have a problem, do pool the ideas for solving it. Meetings can help that.<\/p>\n

But sometimes we have to draw a line and move on. A meeting might\u00a0work but groups of people can get stuck and demotivate individual action and movement, if not very carefully handled.<\/p>\n

Caution: meeting, handle with care.<\/p>\n

****
\nON MEETINGS\u2026<\/p>\n

A recent blog <\/a>about formal meetings from Roy Lilley.<\/p>\n

And a tweet <\/a>of one way of thinking about meetings.<\/p>\n

****
\nON SLEEP\u2026.<\/p>\n

And a method for getting to sleep from my psychologist colleague Steve Bagi:<\/p>\n

Work through this when you have finished all you need to do. It is an exercise which helps to clear the thought congestion of so many things in our minds.<\/p>\n

While in bed in the dark\u2026<\/p>\n

1\u2026identify three-four things that you can hear e.g fan, clock<\/p>\n

2\u2026identify three-four things that you can see e.g. some street light, shadow<\/p>\n

3\u2026identify three-four things that you can physically feel e.g blanket on me, pillow<\/p>\n

Then ask yourself the question \u201cwhat do I want to do now\u201d with the answer \u201cI want to go to sleep\u201d.<\/p>\n

This should clear some of the congestion.\u00a0 Repeat as many times as needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The night before the start of an important 3 day meeting. At 2am. A mosquito arrives. Buzzing my ears. I tried some things suggested by colleagues (catching it with the light off, looking for it with the light on, putting a light on in another room to attract it\u2026). None of them seemed to work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[150,128],"tags":[50,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2567"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2574,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions\/2574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}