Why Your Calendar is Killing Your Productivity
The video session was supposed to start at 2 PM.
The average knowledge worker now spends 38% of their week in meetings.
Walking through any corporate office between 10 AM and 4 PM, you’ll see the same thing: empty desks and full meeting rooms.
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 managers 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.
The uncomfortable truth about meeting culture? most of them are just performance anxiety disguised as collaboration.
Think about the last “brainstorming session” you attended. How much actual useful communication happened? How many actionable outcomes emerged?
The dirty secret of meeting culture is that most meetings exist to make executives feel like they’re in control, not to actually solve problems or make progress.
This isn’t collaboration – it’s group therapy for leaders who can’t communicate clearly outside of a formal setting. It’s management theatre, performed for an audience of captive colleagues.
Let me tell you about the worst meeting I ever experienced.
I was brought in with a technology company in Melbourne that was struggling with project delays. The CEO decided the solution was better communication, so he instituted weekly “alignment meetings” for all department heads.
The first meeting ran for nearly three hours. The agenda covered fifteen different projects, most of which only involved two or three 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.
Digital meetings have removed the natural barriers that used to limit how often we got together.
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 twenty 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 quick conversation is now a scheduled session with agendas. Every day is fragmented into hour-long chunks between endless conferences.
The thing that makes my blood boil: the belief that more communication automatically leads to better decisions.
Excessive communication often creates more problems than it solves.
I worked with a creative agency 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 validated in multiple meetings before it could move forward. The result was mediocre work that had been over-analysed into blandness. The creative breakthroughs died in the endless review processes.
Genius doesn’t happen in conference rooms full of committee members.
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}.}}
“I’ll send out a calendar invite” – 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.”
But here’s where I’ll probably lose some people: most “collaborative” meetings are actually destructive to real teamwork.
True collaboration happens when colleagues have the space to develop ideas independently, then come together to build on each other’s work.
Collaboration isn’t sitting in a room brainstorming from scratch – it’s intelligent people 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 companies assign a dollar cost to meetings based on the hourly rates of attendees. When you see that your “quick sync” is costing $1,200 per hour, you start to think differently about whether it’s necessary. The productivity improvements are usually obvious.
Second, distinguish between status reports and actual problem-solving.
Status updates don’t require real-time interaction.
The meetings that justify their time are the ones focused on creative challenges that require collaborative thinking. Everything else – status reports – should happen through asynchronous channels.
I worked with a professional services company that replaced their weekly status meetings with a simple weekly report. 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 obsession with inclusive decision-making has created meeting explosion where entire departments discuss problems that could be resolved by a small group.
Consultation is important for organisational issues, but not every choice requires group consensus. Most operational decisions should be made by the individuals closest to the work. They understand that more perspectives isn’t always better input.
Here’s the metric that changed everything for me:
Measure the proportion of time spent in discussions compared to tangible results.
For most organisations, the ratio is terrifying. They’re spending three hours discussing every one hour of actual work.
Sometimes the ratio is even worse. Successful organisations flip this ratio. They spend minimal time in meetings and maximum time on execution. The talking serves the doing, not the other way around.
That’s not efficiency – it’s madness.
Why are people so attached to meetings?
For many managers, meetings provide a sense of relevance that actual work doesn’t offer. In a meeting, you can direct the conversation, prove your expertise, and feel important to organisational success.
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 create value.
Don’t get me wrong – some meetings are absolutely necessary.
The organisations that do meetings well treat them like precious resources.
Everything else is just organisational performance that consumes the time and energy that could be spent on actual work. They’re strategic about when to use them, rigorous about how to run them, and honest about whether they’re working.
After eighteen years of helping organisations improve their productivity, here’s my assessment about meeting culture:
The best meetings are the ones that eliminate the need for future meetings.
Poor meetings generate more meetings.
Choose accordingly.
The future of workplace success depends on it.
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