Wankernomics

Once every few years you will get sick of the bullshit at your current company and kid yourself into thinking that there will be less bullshit elsewhere. This is know as ‘the grass is always less fertilised with bullshit on the other side’ phenomenon.

Meetings are so abundant that, statistically speaking, it is almost certain you have either just finished a meeting, you are on your way to one, or you are in one right now, reading this book with your video turned off while someone in the background asks if we should ‘do a quick around the grounds’.

It goes without saying that meetings are totally useless. Nothing valuable or innovative or interesting has ever resulted from a meeting. Isaac Newton did not, as it turns out, invent calculus at a 9.30am stand-up. Marie Curie did not discover radium during a weekly status update.

Yet meetings are utterly inescapable. If we didn’t have meetings, we’d all get our day’s work done by around 9.30am each morning, we’d be home by 10am and the entire corporate capitalist system would collapse.

An icebreaker is a short game intended for kindergarten children but carried out by adults. It’s designed as a fun way to relax a group into a session.*

Like the ships after which they are named, icebreakers are designed to shatter things – in this case, your will to live.