Why Your Calendar is Killing Your Productivity
If I had a dollar for every meeting I’ve attended that achieved absolutely nothing, I could retire to the Byron Bay tomorrow.
We’re in the middle of a meeting epidemic, and it’s crushing Australian business performance.
I estimated recently that my clients are collectively spending over $1.5 million per year on meetings that produce no actual decisions.
That’s not including the opportunity cost of what doesn’t get done while everyone’s sitting around a table discussing things that could be resolved in a five-minute conversation. The meeting culture has become so entrenched that people feel guilty when they’re not in meetings. I’ve had executives tell me they don’t feel productive unless their calendar is completely booked with back-to-back sessions.
We’ve created a culture where being busy is more important than being useful.
What most executives refuse to acknowledge: most of them are just control issues disguised as collaboration.
Remember that last “touch base” you sat through. How much actual strategic thinking happened? How many actionable outcomes emerged?
The dirty secret of meeting culture is that most meetings exist to make organisers feel like they’re in control, not to actually solve problems or make progress.
This isn’t collaboration – it’s collective procrastination for executives who can’t make decisions outside of a formal setting. It’s management theatre, performed for an audience of captive employees.
The meeting that nearly broke my faith in corporate sanity.
I was working with a manufacturing business in Melbourne that was struggling with project delays. The CEO decided the solution was better communication, so he instituted daily “alignment meetings” for all department heads.
The first meeting ran for nearly three hours. The agenda covered eight different projects, most of which only involved some people in the room. By the end, everyone knew a little bit about everything, but nobody had the time to actually work on anything.
Within a month, they were having meetings to plan meetings, and follow-up meetings to discuss what was covered in the previous meetings. The project delays got worse, not better. The irony was completely lost on them. They genuinely couldn’t see that the meeting about meetings was the exact problem they were trying to solve.
Video conferencing technology was supposed to save us time, but it’s actually made meetings more frequent and less effective.
When meetings required physical presence, there was an automatic filter. That friction meant you only called meetings when they were genuinely necessary.
Now you can set up a video call in thirty seconds, invite unlimited people with a few clicks, and create the illusion of progress without any of the logistical constraints that used to make people think twice.
The result? Meeting explosion. What used to be a brief discussion is now a scheduled session with agendas. Every day is fragmented into hour-long chunks between endless conferences.
Here’s the part that really gets me fired up: the belief that more communication automatically leads to better outcomes.
Over-collaboration is just as destructive as under-collaboration.
I worked with a marketing department that was so committed to “transparent communication” that writers were spending more time explaining their work than actually doing it.
Every concept needed to be discussed in multiple meetings before it could move forward. The result was mediocre work that had been focus-grouped into blandness. The innovative solutions died in the endless feedback loops.
Genius doesn’t happen in conference rooms full of stakeholders.
We’ve created a whole lexicon to make pointless gatherings sound essential.
“We should probably take this offline” – translation: “I haven’t thought this through, but I don’t want to look unprepared.”
{{“{Let’s get everyone in a room|We need all the stakeholders aligned|This requires a cross-functional approach}” – translation: “I’m afraid to make a decision, so let’s spread the responsibility around.”|The phrase “let’s unpack this” makes me want to {scream|lose my mind|run for the hills}.}}
“We should touch base next week” – translation: “Nothing will actually change, but we’ll create the illusion of progress through scheduling.” It’s become corporate speak for “let’s turn a simple issue into an hour-long discussion that resolves nothing.”
This might be controversial, but hear me out: most “collaborative” meetings are actually counterproductive to real teamwork.
Real creative work happens in uninterrupted spaces where professionals can think deeply without the pressure of contributing for an audience.
Collaboration isn’t sitting in a room discussing from scratch – it’s capable professionals bringing their best thinking to a focused discussion. The meetings that actually work are the ones where people come prepared, not the ones where they come to figure things out together.
So what does effective meeting culture actually look like?
Create barriers that force people to justify gathering time.
I love the organisations that have instituted “meeting-free afternoons” where scheduling are simply not allowed.
Some organisations assign a dollar cost to meetings based on the time value of attendees. When you see that your “quick sync” is costing $500 per hour, you start to think differently about whether it’s necessary. The productivity improvements are usually dramatic.
Separate communication from collaboration.
Status updates don’t require synchronous interaction.
The technical teams that do this well have automated reporting that eliminates the need for update sessions entirely.
I worked with a consulting firm that replaced their weekly status meetings with a simple online dashboard. Meeting time dropped by two-thirds, and project transparency actually improved. Everyone can see what’s happening without sitting through meeting discussions.
Third, embrace the fact that not everyone needs to be consulted in every decision.
The best leaders I know are strategic about who they invite in different types of decisions.
Stakeholder engagement is important for organisational issues, but not every choice requires universal agreement. Most operational decisions should be made by the roles closest to the work. They understand that broader input isn’t always better input.
The number that made me realise how broken meeting culture really is:
Track the ratio of discussion time to actual work on your major projects.
I’ve worked with companies where people were working overtime to complete tasks because their regular schedule were consumed by conference calls.
Sometimes the ratio is even worse. Successful teams flip this ratio. They spend limited time in meetings and concentrated time on actual work. The talking serves the doing, not the other way around.
That’s not productivity – it’s organisational failure.
Why are people so attached to meetings?
There’s also a security in meetings. If you’re in meetings all day, you can’t be blamed for not delivering work.
Implementation is often solitary, risky, and doesn’t provide the same immediate feedback as contributing to a meeting. The meetings become evidence of your commitment, even if they don’t generate outcomes.
Don’t get me wrong – some meetings are absolutely necessary.
The discussions that work are purposeful, thoroughly organised, and decision-focused. They bring together the key stakeholders to make decisions that require real-time discussion.
Everything else is just corporate theatre that wastes the time and energy that could be spent on productive work. They’re careful about when to use them, strict about how to run them, and realistic about whether they’re valuable.
What I wish every leader understood about meetings:
Good meetings solve problems permanently rather than creating ongoing debate cycles.
Ineffective meetings multiply like bacteria.
Design your meeting culture to serve work, not substitute for it.
The future of workplace productivity depends on it.
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