The thrilling conclusion to an epic five-part series. (See also parts one, two, three, and four.)

Part of the frustration with the stack of meeting notes from the past meeting was that I wasn’t clear how processing and recording them was helpful. Personally, I find it helpful to review projects and priorities regularly—helps keep me on track—but four weeks is too long a gap between reviews. So I started doing weekly reviews, which was very helpful to me. The problem is, if every project I was keeping track of was more-or-less “current” in my own system, what was I doing expending all this energy to keep it current in another system which I don’t use?

Moreover, what’s the point of having a regularly-scheduled meeting if we see each other all the time? Most of our most productive collaborations happen spontaneously anyway. Those are what I need to keep notes of—for myself. So why have a monthly meeting at all?

Papa was very helpful here. He helped me remember the true purpose behind the meeting:

Yeah, that’s right. There’s a reason I chose donuts for the masthead of this blog series.

So what was the solution to my dilemma? I fired myself from the job of Secretary. Kyle’s taking notes now. We’ve yet to see what his minutes will look like. Though I’m pretty sure they won’t have as much detail as mine—after all, I had to remind him several times that “You should be writing this down!”—I don’t care. I keep my own (very brief) notes now, and while the meetings are still kind of long, at least when it’s over, it’s over.

So we can enjoy our donuts.