Manuel Spitschan and his team meet monthly to discuss memos prepared by members of the laboratory.Credit: Translational Sensory & Circadian Neuroscience Unit
Every month, the members of my laboratory gather for a video call that starts in silence. For 20 minutes, the whole group sits and reads a memo written by one of us. Then, we discuss it for the remaining 70 minutes.
Since we started doing this in April 2024, we have written around 50,000 words between us — the length of a short novel — on topics ranging from the design of a particular experiment to a postdoc’s uncertainty about her scientific focus. And all of them were covered in a memo no longer than six pages.
The ‘memo meeting’ format comes from industry. It was introduced by the technology company Amazon in 2004 after the firm’s leaders argued that the information density of text is higher than that of presentations, and that meeting time is better spent discussing a written document. Whether the six-page narrative beats alternative ways of sharing information has never been tested empirically, but it is well embedded in Amazon’s corporate practices and is discussed in shareholder letters.
I wanted to experiment with this format in another domain: our scientific discussions. By using memo meetings to supplement weekly check-ins focused on logistics and fine-grained scientific topics, I hoped that the lab would become more efficient. What I did not anticipate was that this format would change what topics people were willing to bring to the table.
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My neuroscience research group investigates how the environment influences human circadian rhythms and sleep across a wide range of biomedical-research areas, including laboratory, field, intervention and modelling studies. Our monthly meetings bring together our diverse methods, unifying our various strands of work. And the memo method puts everyone on equal footing.
Presentations can act as a crutch when the speaker is uncertain about something. For example, if you’re discussing a research design, you can put something like ‘n = 40, fully counterbalanced assignment of conditions’ on a slide without discussing how counterbalancing is being done and what happens if it fails. Writing in full sentences requires exacting precision, and any gaps in understanding will become apparent to the author as they draft the memo. Those gaps will also be visible to the reader if not addressed. Writing six pages might seem like a lot more work than throwing together a slide deck, but it is time better spent: a memo still provides an update for other lab members, but it also develops the writer’s thinking.
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Because reading time is set aside during the meeting, everyone has the same opportunity to engage with the material. This levels the intellectual playing field. We are not allowed to drift away, as might happen during a presentation; if people finish reading early, they generally spend the rest of the allotted time taking notes. It is understood that during the session, distractions should be kept to a minimum.
Sometimes, I have had to ensure that people don’t exceed the six-page limit. Most memos end up being about 1,900 words (five to six pages), including figures and tables. But the page limit isn’t really the constraint; the 20 minutes are. If we can’t read the document in the allotted time, it is too long.
When I suggested that we start using this technique, I did not enforce a specific template. However, a common format has stuck: the memo starts by posing the problem or question it discusses and ends with questions that the author hopes will be answered after the discussion.