The worst thing about boring meetings is that you can't surf the internet."The trouble with meetings is that you have to look alert," says David Bolchover, author of The Living Dead, a book about workplace ennui and disengagement."If you're daydreaming or doodling, someone is going to notice that you're drifting off. Looking bored is bad - you need to at least feign interest and nod at the important moments."Thus, workplace meetings are a toxic combination of mind-numbing dullness and the need to pay rapt attention.Most of us spend a bi g chunk of our working lives in meetings. One survey puts the figure at 16 hours a week, while another estimates that the average UK employee sits through 6239 meetings in a working lifetime.So what are some of the best strategies for coping with dull meetings?Be helpfulA good starting point is to recognise that, even if you do not have control of the meeting, you still can make suggestions to the person in charge."Often meetings start out boring because you begin by going through the minutes of a previous meeting," says Octavius Black, CEO of The Mind Gym. "Suggest instead that you start with a discussion and leave the minutes to the end. You could also offer to draw up an agenda for the meeting."Just make sure you position yourself as someone who is helping with dull tasks, rather than a usurper who wants to seize control.Use them to prove your worth"If you're the kind of person who just wants to get on with their work," Bolchover says, "you probably find meetings a waste of time." Conversely, those who like meetings tend to be people who are more political or social.One approach, then, can be to convince yourself of some of the "non-work-work" benefits of meetings. "In big offices, you often have large numbers of people who do nonmeasurable jobs with hard to measure outputs," says Bolchover. "Nobody knows whether you're any good or not and so your worth is gauged on your image. Meetings, especially large ones with 10-15 people, are a useful vehicle to project your image and further your career."Play the gameThis might seem cynical, but in many organisations it is a pragmatic, realistic approach and more likely to result in career advancement than good work alone. If you struggle with it, tell yourself that you have to be at the meeting anyway, so you may as well play the game.Black suggests a slightly more detached, academic strategy. "You might want to treat meetings as psychological experiments. Look at the politics of the team and ask yourself why people are saying what they're saying. Listen to their tone of voice and understand their behaviours and the dynamics between individuals."Whatever approach you take, the point is you're recognising that, although meetings might not accomplish much productive work, they're very good places to achieve other goals which can help your career. Moreover, once meetings begin to deliver something for you, you'll start to find them, if not interesting, then at least less boring.- ©The Daily Telegraph..