Have you ever found yourself sitting in a meeting and feeling it was a complete waste of time? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. According to several studies, most meetings are unproductive. It seems to be an endemic problem in businesses all around the world.

This same problem raised in a company retrospective we did at MailTrack.io a few months ago. We started discussing our concerns about spending too much time in meetings and how to decide who to invite or not to each meeting. In the middle of the conversation, the Open Space “Law of two feet” came to my mind.

If at any time during our time together you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet, go someplace else.

While I was explaining it to the rest of the team, Philip, one of our developers, said:

— Ok, I get it. It’s like an “Eject button”.

I couldn’t have explained it better myself. And that comment lead to the idea of having an “Eject button” to just get out of the meeting room when we feel we’re not contributing, getting bored or losing one of the most important and scarce resource, our time.

So, we bought a desk bell for $10 and put it on the table of the meeting room.

We all agreed that anyone is able to push that button at anytime and leave, without blame, if they feel the meeting is being unproductive.

Sometimes, the most simple tool is also the most powerful.

¡Ding!

I’m leaving ;-)