Meetings Are Not a Food Group

Nobody defends the current volume of meetings. Everybody keeps attending them. This is because cancelling a meeting requires one identifiable person to take a small social risk, while attending one requires nobody to do anything. Inertia is undefeated.

The test

A meeting is justified when it needs live back-and-forth: a decision with genuine disagreement, a delicate conversation, a creative session, or something that has already failed twice in writing. Everything else is a document.

If the meeting could be replaced by three paragraphs and a deadline, it should be replaced by three paragraphs and a deadline.

Practical replacements

• Status meetings → written updates. Same information, asynchronous, searchable, and it does not fragment anyone's morning.
• "Quick sync" → a message with a specific question. Most syncs exist because someone did not want to write a clear question.
• Recurring 1:1s → keep them. These are the exception. Cancel these last, if ever.
• All-hands → recorded, with a live Q&A slot. Attendance becomes voluntary and the questions get better.

If you must meet

Every invite carries a purpose line, a decision to be made, and the shortest workable list of attendees. Optional means optional, genuinely, without career consequences. Default to 25 minutes. End early when you are done — the remaining time is a gift, not a gap to fill.

The health angle, since that is our beat

This is not a productivity preference. Back-to-back meeting days are associated with higher self-reported stress, less movement, fewer breaks, worse eating, and work spilling into the evening because the actual work has not started yet. A calendar reform is a health intervention wearing a business costume. Use whichever framing gets it approved.