fortune favors the bold

Fortune does favor the bold, and you'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try. 

Sheryl Sandberg 

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2013. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World. 

no such thing as work-life balance

There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences. 

Jack Welch

Top Inspiring Thoughts of Jack Welch by M.D. Sharma. Prabhat Prakashan. 2021. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World. 

declining a meeting invitation

The most important thing when declining a meeting invitation is to monitor the tone of your message and adjust it if necessary. Since written communication lacks nonverbal cues, declining an interview via email, text or messaging app requires a delicate approach. Always aim to be:

Clear: Make sure you say it is definite that you won't attend.

Direct: State why you won't make it.

Polite: Take the time to craft a complete reply. Instead of simply clicking “decline,” including an explanation can better help the meeting organizer understand your decision.

Indeed Editorial Team

How To Decline a Meeting (With Examples). Indeed.com February 22, 2021.

regularly scheduled meetings

Regularly scheduled meetings (staff meetings, progress report meetings, and sales meetings) sometimes seem to be called out of habit or sense of duty rather than need. They’re valuable not only for the information they allow people to share but also for the face time they offer. However, their importance doesn’t necessarily make them interesting. Meeting with the same people in the same room every week to discuss the same topics can get boring, resulting in many empty chairs – and a lack of enthusiasm among the remaining attendees. Here are some ways to keep your regular meetings fresh – and attendance high.

• Regularly review the meeting’s purpose
• Solicit agenda items from the group in advance
• Cancel when there is no reason to meet
• Rotate leadership of the meeting

Martha Craumer

“Give Your Standing Meetings a Makeover,” adapted from the “The Effective Meeting: A Checklist for Success,” Harvard Management Communication Letter. March 2001. As quoted in HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter. Harvard Business Review Press. 2016.

video fatigue

 “Video fatigue” comes from many factors, such as the difficulty of making real eye contact with meeting participants (known as “gaze awareness”). Research by Microsoft shows that concentration begins to fray about 30-40 minutes into a meeting, and that stress begins to increase after about two hours of videoconferencing. 

Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud, and Andy Parker

“3 Steps to Better Virtual Meetings,” Harvard Business Review. February 19, 2021