Updated 21st October 2026. First published in 2019.
Meetings exist to share information or bring people together around a common goal. They go wrong quickly. If you've noticed that most meetings end with nothing more than another meeting in the diary, you're not alone. Before long, meetings become less about their purpose and more about scheduling the next one.
Managers and leaders often call meetings to get everyone on the same page. Updates on each person's work, policy changes and meetings for the sake of meeting are all common. A meeting every Monday afternoon because that's what the team has always done doesn't move anyone closer to their goals, and team members soon realise these meetings are more about being seen than getting things done.
The research backs this up. A survey of 5,000 knowledge workers by Atlassian found that meetings are ineffective 72% of the time at sharing information, encouraging collaboration and getting tasks done.
Meetings have spread since I first wrote this
Remote and hybrid working didn't reduce meetings. It scattered them across the whole day. Microsoft's analysis of anonymised Microsoft 365 data found that 57% of meetings are now ad hoc calls without a calendar invite, one in five meetings happens outside normal working hours, and meetings after 8pm rose by 16% in a year. The average knowledge worker gets a ping from email, chat or a calendar every 1.75 minutes.
Some companies have taken drastic action. In January 2023, Shopify cancelled every recurring meeting with three or more people, removing around 10,000 events and freeing more than 76,500 hours from employees' calendars. You don't need to go that far. These nine habits will get you most of the way.
9 ways to avoid meetings about meetings
1. Establish a strict agenda
Every meeting, whether it's a regular catch-up or called for a specific purpose, should follow a set formula. Start with an agenda and know when to move on to the next topic. The person leading the meeting should ask only for new information, and once that runs out, move to the next item.
Not everyone will be ready to move on, and some people will want to keep revisiting the same topics. Tell them you'll pick up their concerns separately, then make time to do it. That stops frustration building while the rest of the group moves on.
2. Determine what questions need answering before the meeting
Agreeing the questions in advance keeps the discussion on what matters now or soon. When someone recycles old information, don't shut them down bluntly. Ask how it has become more relevant since the group last discussed it.
Knowing when a topic has run its course can be difficult, especially in open meetings where several people each believe their contribution matters. A short set of questions helps whoever is leading, and any participant can use them.
"How will this help us reach this week's goal?"
"What do you expect this information to change?"
"What can we do to change this?"
3. Determine how the meeting will change the current directive
Every meeting should lead to change, whether that's a decision, a new direction or a faster way of working. If a meeting only covers daily work, that's fine. Set a goal of making one task more efficient this week, then two the next.
4. Encourage participants to bring only new information to the table
Asking each person to bring something new does more than get tasks done. It brings the team together, because everyone becomes a contributor rather than an audience.
The leader should recognise those contributions and the effort behind them. Making each person, or in larger meetings each team, accountable for a set of tasks encourages everyone to arrive prepared. Mentioning the next deadline at the start also helps. A simple "we all know that once we're done here, we have a deadline on Friday" gives the meeting a sense of urgency.
5. Set a time limit and stick with it
Urgency keeps communication short and cuts out unnecessary discussion. Quick yes or no rounds on goals and one-sentence answers to the leader's questions keep the pace up.
A good chair gives everyone the chance to share an opinion without wasting time or creating distractions. Most distractions start when one person reacts to someone else's feedback and drags the conversation onto old disagreements. Start on time, finish on time, and finish early if you can.
6. Do you have to be at the meeting?
Meetings often have too many people in them. If others from your team are going, you might be able to skip it. If the agenda doesn't cover anything that concerns you, skip it. If there's a series of meetings, you probably don't need to attend all of them. If you don't have to be there, don't go.
7. Are people prepared for the meeting?
If you can't skip a meeting, you can at least help it move faster. Most people arrive unprepared. Spot this early and share the information people need beforehand. A few minutes of preparation saves the whole group far more time in the room.
8. Is there a clear purpose for the meeting in the first place?
If you have to attend, make sure the meeting is as productive as possible. Contact the organiser and ask what they want to achieve. That question often makes them think harder about the meeting, which improves their planning. My own test is simple. A meeting is worth having only when it needs real-time discussion to reach a decision that an email, a document or a message can't. If the organiser can't state that decision in one sentence, the meeting probably shouldn't happen.
9. Block off your calendar
If none of the above works, block out time in your calendar to work on your own. Instead of squeezing work into whatever gaps remain, often outside working hours, protect some prime time for yourself. People can't book you when your calendar shows you're unavailable.
Whole meeting-free days work even better. A study of 76 companies published in MIT Sloan Management Review found that two meeting-free days a week raised productivity by 71%, and three cut stress by 57%. The researchers found three meeting-free days a week gave the best overall balance. Going completely meeting-free made things worse, with productivity and satisfaction both falling.
What meeting-free days do to productivity and stress
Change reported across 76 companies, by number of meeting-free days a week
Source: Laker, Pereira, Budhwar and Malik, MIT Sloan Management Review, 2022.
How we run meetings at Blu Mint now
Blu Mint works as a distributed team across Estonia, the rest of Europe and North America. That forced us to swap casual office catch-ups for deliberate, written communication, which I wrote about in building remote team communication. Today I have three or four meetings a week. Each one has an agenda and a clear purpose, and we schedule them in the hours when Europe and North America overlap. Everything else happens in writing first.
| Meeting we dropped | What we use instead | When a live call still makes sense |
|---|---|---|
| Daily stand-up | A Slack check-in channel where everyone posts their focus, progress and blockers each morning | When a blocker needs several people to solve it |
| Status updates | Short Loom screen recordings of three to five minutes that people watch when it suits them | When the update needs a decision |
| Brainstorms and draft reviews | Shared Google Docs with inline comments over 24 to 48 hours | When comments disagree and need resolving |
| All-hands updates | A weekly written digest of news, milestones and announcements | For big changes people need to discuss |
Are AI notetakers the answer?
AI meeting tools such as Otter.ai, Fireflies and Fathom transcribe calls, summarise them and pull out action points. They save note-taking, and a searchable transcript makes it easy to find a decision weeks later.
In my experience, they also create a lot of clutter. Recording every call and posting every summary floods channels with text nobody checks, and the summaries often miss nuance, context and the side remarks that matter. There are legal risks too. Law firm White & Case warns that AI summaries can misstate or oversimplify what was said, and transcripts stored by third-party tools raise questions about confidentiality, consent and data retention. In Europe, that also means GDPR.
Use them for the meetings that need a record, check what they produce and don't let them become an excuse to hold more meetings. Our view on where AI helps and where it stops applies here too.
When meetings cost a client relationship
I once worked with a large software company that held meeting after meeting, with us and internally. Every decision needed another call, every call raised new questions, and the work stalled. It became a textbook case of analysis paralysis. Very little got done, and when the contract ended, the client blamed us for the slow progress. The real cause was a culture where meetings had replaced decisions.
It taught me to agree how we'll communicate at the start of every client relationship. We set the meetings we need, agree what happens in writing and report results without a call when a call adds nothing. It's one of the questions worth asking when you weigh up in-house or agency marketing, and it's how our SEO, content writing, PPC, social media and web design teams work with clients today.
Don't feel bad
You're trying to use your time efficiently. That's nothing to apologise for. Your example might even inspire others to rethink how they run meetings, and if enough people protect their time, the culture starts to shift.
Don't sacrifice your health and wellbeing by squeezing real work around pointless meetings. If you're staying late, starting early or working weekends because meetings fill your day, you're adding stress and giving up your personal time, and that doesn't help anyone. Be bolder about protecting your time.
Final thoughts
Like most professionals, you're probably trying to do too much with too little time. Productivity tips can help, although few problems cost you more time than pointless meetings.
Start every meeting with an agenda, ask the right questions, make sure it leads to change, treat everyone as a contributor and create a sense of urgency. Move whatever you can to writing, protect blocks of time and consider meeting-free days. Say no to some meetings, send a delegate to others and help the organiser sharpen the agenda for the ones you must attend.
Be thoughtful about your time, and above all your meeting time. When you do need to book a meeting, one of these scheduling tools will save you the back-and-forth emails.
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Give every meeting an agenda and a clear decision to reach, agree the questions in advance and ask people to bring only new information. Move status updates and reviews to writing, and skip meetings where you aren't needed.
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A study of 76 companies published in MIT Sloan Management Review found three meeting-free days a week gave the best balance. Two days raised productivity by 71%, while going completely meeting-free reduced productivity and satisfaction.
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They save note-taking and make decisions easy to find later, although they often create clutter and miss nuance. Use them for meetings that need a record, check their summaries and consider confidentiality and GDPR before recording.
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A written check-in channel, a short screen recording or a shared document usually does the job. People catch up when it suits them, and you save live calls for decisions that need discussion.