Most of the time, people spend more time discussing and debating a particular topic without reaching any conclusion. This situation frequently occurs both in professional and personal life. What's more, most people are not even aware that this situation leads to a loss of productivity and output. For example, in a private company operating in a competitive and intense environment, if management or coordination meetings (excluding board meetings and other official meetings) last more than 2 hours, participants can lose focus on the main topic, unnecessary discussions can arise, and the effort may result in no significant outcome. In such companies, this time loss is a loss in terms of productivity. Even in personal relationships, parties may start discussing a topic, everyone makes their own interpretations, the conversation shifts to different areas, a long time passes, and the main subject can end up being inconclusive due to a loss of concentration. While people may consider this normal in the natural course of personal life, they are not aware of what they lose in terms of life quality. One contributing factor to all these situations may be our loss of focus due to the intense work life and the shortage of time we experience within 24 hours.
Similar situations can be observed in discussion programs in the media. Participants elaborate on various topics, jump from one point to another, and at the same time, move away from describing and discussing a specific and concrete topic. To address this, some programs have introduced the technique of specific questions and time-bound answers. BBC Hard Talk program can be cited as the most notable example.
Therefore, both in professional and personal life, as we develop our meeting and time management techniques, we should also understand that we can achieve more efficient and effective results to the extent that we improve our skills in focus, specificity, and clarity. Being aware of this aspect is a good starting point.
Dr. Bilinç Dolmacı
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