I know they feel like work, but in general they’re not. They’re performative nonsense.
We all know that a perfect meeting can foster collaborative effort, cement relationships, and improve creative output and communication.
Most meetings are Not. Good. Meetings. Most meetings are junk. Filler. A stab at productivity that goes wildly awry. Most meetings consist of one party handing work to another party and, if you’re really lucky, one or both parties will promise to follow up. In general, you’re not lucky. So the time you spent meeting is just about accumulating work, in the best case, or a waste of time, in the worst.
Plus, you prepared! You stayed late producing talking points. You brought enough copies of output for everyone. You remembered a pen! And it’s almost always pointless. This meeting used up so much of you when you could have been spent more productively elsewhere.
If meetings are just task gathering opportunities then we have better ways to do that. If meetings are designed to promote collaborative work then we need to restructure them systemically so we aren’t wasting them. And if meetings don’t forward the mission we need to cancel them.
No more trade offs to fit in a meeting; pushing solo work to personal time. Instead, let’s thoughtfully consider whether a meeting is needed at all.