Jake Weidokal

Today I found myself in the downtown area of an old, little rural Ohio town. Surrounded by brick buildings, with a large, antiquated concrete community bank on the opposite corner. I stopped in at a local Chinese takeout place with my family for lunch. We ordered our food, and were told the customary “10 minutes”. While waiting for them to prepare our food, I stepped out onto the corner with my daughter.

It was… unremarkable. Another typical Ohio day in a quaint Ohio town.

But doing unremarkable things with a one year-old can suddenly make them remarkable.

I recently had 35 meetings in a week. This is a lot, but not uncommon for employees of large enterprises. While it is easy to lament an organization’s “meeting culture”, there are also actions individual employees can take to reduce their meeting load. I recognized that attending all the meetings on my calendar was not possible (one time slot was quadruple-booked!) so I developed the following approach for responding to meetings.

I recently turned 26. I’m no sage, but I’ve picked up a couple of lessons in my time. Below are 26 things I would tell a younger me if I could.