Meetings, Measured out with Coffee Spoons

when your cup is empty, the meeting is over

The more I live and work in Spain, the more I allow the dream that it is both possible and recommended to ditch the conference room.

You know that stale room with a nice round table and speaker phone centerpiece, where people arrive without a look to the agenda sleeping in their inbox. It’s the room that promises to set us free for lunch in just five more, ten, no, twenty more minutes.

If it were not for Madrid — home of the relaxing cup of café con leche  — I would never have known of another, more intimate option for work meetings. Now, when I need to meet with one or two people, a bar might just be the best option.

A bar! But, before the imagination runs wild with cocktails, bars in Spain day-double as caffeine dispensers, also serving breakfast, lunch, and tapas.

how to have a meeting in the time it takes to drink a coffee (illustration by @pabesteves)

An incredible number of worthwhile decisions can be made in this setting. Quickly too. In fact, a bar (ahem coffee shop) is ideal for a small meeting because the setting — in all its frenetic glory of clanging conversations and espresso machines — helps break down the guard between people, builds work relationships that hint at friendship, and suppresses behavior stemming from the bias that meetings are inherently unproductive.

Not to mention, coffee is the ideal egg timer.

More often than not, a meeting need not last longer than it takes to drink a cup of coffee. Once that cup is nearing empty, so should the meeting… with important items addressed and the conversation moving towards action items and next steps.

Of course, one can elect to drink quickly or slowly — an espresso or latte — but the golden rule of drinking stands: imbibe at the same rate as your companion. It is only polite.

The decision can always be made to order another coffee. But this is a conscious choice to extend the meeting, which entails getting up, going to the counter, placing an order, reaching for the wallet.

Such effort! Incomparable to the ease at which conference room meetings are extended by five more, ten, no, twenty more minutes.

Surely that second cup will be worthwhile.

This article originally appeared on Medium.