Wrike-Up Wednesday: Unpopular Opinion - Work Edition! 🔥💼

Never use Whatsapp for business. NEVER.

PowerPoint timeline slide is not a project plan.

Okay, here’s my hot take: meetings are overrated!

I swear, a lot of them could just be a quick email or a message. We’ve cut back on meetings where we can, and it’s helped us stay focused and get more done. Async updates are a vibe.

What about you? Do you feel the same or do you find meetings are actually helpful?

The new table view is 🔥 and far superior to list view. 😱

Teams is a better chat tool than slack, just in my humble opinion.

My unpopular work opinion:

Meetings straight at the beginning of the work day or shortly before/after Lunch break are always a bad idea.

Try the default workflow in Wrike for a while before you decide it can't work for your team. There's value in adapting those standard statuses to your work while you analyze what customizations will really pay off.

I do this in my individual space and have seen project managers successfully sustain it through the lifecycle of projects. Most teams skip it and miss its benefits.

If you do not speak during a recurring meeting you are there for recognition and not to add value. Remove yourself from the invite and ask to be reached out to when your help is needed. Spend the hours you would have spent in the meeting making an impact.

For presentations, I was always told to start with raw content (could be messy bullet points, long text, etc.) and then focus on refining + design (formatting, images, etc.).

I find myself setting up design from the get-go; not sure why this works for me, but laying my ideas out as already-branded and throwing in the images/screencaps that I want help me visualize my content and flow better and build my ideas up. Not to say that I don't refine - things end up changing as I go for sure! 

To enhance my productivity, I allocate specific blocks of time on my calendar to focus on my tasks. While this approach might initially appear as though I'm not fully available to the team, it actually enables me to efficiently complete my daily responsibilities. Additionally, I've observed that this practice empowers others to explore their own solutions, rather than depending solely on me, the Marketing Project Manager, for answers. ✨

People should stop pretending to be productive from 9 to 5. Real productivity comes in bursts, like 2 to 4 hyper-focused hours where you’re in flow. You don't always need a greeting when messaging someone. Skip the "how are you" and get to the point. Collaboration gets worse the more connected we are. Constant pings and meetings kill momentum. Sometimes email IS better than a phone call, just ask a lawyer.

Meetings should not occur before 10:00am. I take a while for my brain to fully function in the mornings and am so much more productive in meetings after 10:00am. This makes things difficult for "multi-time zone" organizations, but even people who function in the morning have some time to read through emails that came in the night before and get settled into their day, when meeting start after 10:00am.

In the age of remote work, I actually prefer at least a couple of days in person. For our team, being in person fosters relational equity, which then encourages and supports collaboration. There really is something to be said for "water cooler chats"! 

Most people in charge really don't have any idea what they're doing, they're just making it up as they go. AKA, the Peter Principal is largely right.

9 a.m. meetings are good for productivity (no)

Brainstorming sessions are overrated. I’ve found that the best ideas often come when I’m working alone and away from the pressure of a group setting. These "meetings" can sometimes feel like a battle of the loudest voices, which doesn’t always lead to the most creative or thoughtful solutions. 

Being asked to come back to the office more (instead of completely remote working)  for face-to-face meetings and interactions while working in international teams spread across different continents, countries and time-zones is not very logic and also not adding value. On the opposite, it increases stress and frustration etc....on my end.

People have different levels of productivity at different times. I'm most productive in the morning for a few hours. Then need a break to refresh myself and calm down mentally. Then I'm productive again for another few hours in the afternoon. If possible, I prefer a more flexible working environment so I can tailor things to my working style and deliver the best work. 

To really get focus time when working remotely, use the "out of office" meeting option to reject any other proposed meetings.  You can change the reply/message to "focus work, no interruptions" or whatever you want.  Make sure your chat has the same block.

Weekly status meetings are pointless - especially ones with multiple teams working on unrelated projects. I understand the importance of sharing visibility but unless there's something to troubleshoot or discussions that need to happen to move things forward, there's no reason why they can't be replaced with an email. 

Overcommunication > Brevity -- I'd much rather have more information than less, especially when assigning tasks or conducting training sessions. Too often, we assume everyone thinks like we do or know what we mean, but that's rarely the case

Using the right tool for the right piece of work > using one tool for everything. You can't, efficiently and effectively, force a project management tool to be a CRM and it only costs you more money and time down the road.

In most marketing projects I’ve seen, personas are either poorly defined or quickly forgotten during execution. Often, they’re just nice-looking archetypes on paper that don’t actually reflect real customer behavior. Worse yet—they’re ignored in campaigns because they lack connection to actual data.

A persona is only useful if it’s based on real insights and continuously updated through real interactions with leads and customers. Otherwise, it becomes just an internal branding exercise with little to no impact on results.

We use Working Genius to plan for meetings.  We need all parts of the work in a space.  I love this as it ensures that we hit WIDGET when we implement our projects.

I think cameras on during team meetings (or any small 1:1 meeting) is key in staying connected.

I also do NOT believe in multi-tasking. It happens, and i almost thrive in the chaos, but my personal goal is one thing at a time.

Absolutely do not an important meeting during lunch or late of a Friday, if you want results.

Let's see - My unpopular work opinion: don't use SharePoint to be a DAM solution. Ever. Tooooo many files.... hard to find anything!!

My Unpopular Opinion: The 9-to-5 workday is overrated and unproductive. Let's empower employees by providing flexible schedules to allow them to manage their time, fostering creativity and a sense of ownership.

PPT presentations have their place, but they are done to death and a lot of people switch off during them. Would love to see some restraint using them.

Set automations for individual project managers to receive notification on overdue items, whilst it may spam them, they would never miss the same even if they do not login to Wrike