As an individual contributor, I despise weekly one-on-ones. It’s yet another meeting that disrupts my day. I rarely get anything out of them and am always grateful when it is canceled or postponed for whatever reason.
As a manager, I give my reports the choice of when to have our one on ones. Most choose times just before or after lunch or our daily standup or another standing meeting precisely because at those times you’ll already be disrupted. Maybe your manager would be amenable to scheduling a different time that’s less disruptive to you?
What a great topic of discussion for your next 1:1 :)
Talk about the frequency of your 1:1 which seem to happen too often, and about all the other disruptions you experience. Your manager will surely find a way to help with these if possible.
I wonder if they aren't valuable for you because you aren't trying to make them valuable? One-on-ones can be a pointless waste of time if the report does not bring questions and topics and concerns to discuss, even if there are plenty of those things available for discussion.
That’s still a distraction if you are working on something not trivial. Useless meeting like this gets you out of the zone and cancels your mapping of the problem in the brain. You then need to go back to your computer and spend some time getting back to where you were.
Is a disruption for nothing better than a disruption with an illusion of productivity, or that maybe one person got something out of?
On the other hand though, I do think it lowers the barrier if you actually do have something to say - since you know the meeting's happening anyway and isn't something you have to request or say Yes actually I do have something to say today.
