Is it OK to Check Email During Meetings?

Paul Kedrosky is surprised at the results of the in a WSJ survey on in-meeting email habits:

“This strikes me as unrealistic and “do what I say, not what I do”, but I’m curious what people think. Granted, perpetual in-meeting emailing is bad, but discrete checking once in a while is fine.”

I’m not surprised, in fact the survey asked about “feelings”, which to me translates to “do what I say, not what I do”.  I voted “never OK”, but I do plead guilty to occasionally doing it.

I certainly disagree with Paul on “discrete checking once in a while is fine.” No, it’s NOT fine.  But there is another side of the coin: my time, your time, everyone’s time is valuable – don’t waste it with endless, formal, long meetings.  I would not think of checking email at a well-structured, efficiently run, productive and participatory meeting for fear of missing out on something important. 

(Note: I took a snapshot of the poll 500 votes after Paul did, and the percentages are more or less the same, which indicates a fairly consistent public opinion).