How to Stay Awake in a Board Meeting

These tips will make staying awake at a board meeting a little less impossible.

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Despite the spelling of the word “board,” board meetings are so called because they make you dreadfully bored. While it may be a major challenge to stay awake in a board meeting, especially while the folks stuffed in suits insist on speaking in monotone, it can be done. Take advantage of the free coffee that often comes with the meeting and line your pocket protector with the following tips.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

Pen and paper
Quick thinking
Interested look on your face
One ear open in case you’re called on

Step1

Pretend to take notes. Writing things down will make you look fastidious, efficient and incredibly interested. Rather than notes, however, your pad of paper can be filled with an array of fun activities.

Step2

Play word games. This is as easy as picking a word, such as “corporate” and seeing how many other words you can make from the letters. “Corporate” gives you: rat, rate, poor, coop, crop and crap, just to name a few.

Step3

Count words. Certain speakers, in their monotone, may be prone to repeating certain words, utterance or phrases. It’s fun and easy to count how many times Nancy in marketing says “newfangled,” Vance in budget says “earmarked” or George from human resources utters “Um.”

Step4

Rate neckties. Start with a list merely rating all the different ties in attendance from 1-10. The list can then be broken down to rate the most colorful, the most original and one you would do nothing but hang yourself with.

Tips & Warnings

As mentioned, always keep one ear open to what the suits are rambling on about in case someone decides to ask your opinion.
Don’t doodle. Doodling on your notepad may be fun, but someone is bound to glance over and note your pages are filled with eyeballs, smiley men or other funky little illustrations. Whatever you are writing cannot be read from far away.
If you must doodle, don’t draw evil caricatures of the people in attendance. Someone is bound to see.
Don’t play tic-tac-toe with the person next to you. That’s just too obvious.