Less meetings. More productivity.

"Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful." -Jason Fried

I can’t stop thinking about this bold statement:

“Meetings are usually a bug.”

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke said this last year, right before rolling out a year-long initiative to reduce unnecessary meetings. The company’s goal was to cut out 322,000 hours and 474,000 meetings. But why?

As the old saying goes, “time is money”. Shopify wanted their team to understand that this rule applies to meetings, too, so they built a calculator into their employee calendar app to estimate the cost of a meeting with three or more people. The tool used average compensation data, meeting length, and attendee count to put a price tag on every meeting.

They discovered that a 30-minute meeting with three employees can cost $700 to $1,600. Adding an executive to the meeting raised the cost to $2,000 or more.

Whoa.

Shopify’s COO said, “No one at Shopify would expense a $500 dinner, but lots and lots of people spend way more than that in meetings without ever making a decision. The goal of this thing is to show you that time is money. If you have to spend it, you think about it.”

As I did some more digging, I discovered that the team at Shopify is not alone in these strong beliefs about work meetings.

Jason Freid, co-founder and CEO at 37signals agrees.

“Meetings are the last resort, not the first option.”

Jason explains that five people in a (Zoom) room for an hour isn’t a one-hour meeting; it’s a five-hour meeting.

Jason and the team at 37signals feel so strongly about unnecessary meetings that they dedicated an entire chapter to it in their book, Getting Real. They say meetings are toxic and usually arise when a concept isn’t clear.

“Do you really need a meeting? Meetings usually arise when a concept isn’t clear enough. Instead of resorting to a meeting, try to simplify the concept so you can discuss it quickly via email or im or Campfire. The goal is to avoid meetings. Every minute you avoid spending in a meeting is a minute you can get real work done instead.”

But wait. I’m not done building my case against meetings yet.

Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham also has a thought or two on work meetings.

Paul eloquently states that one meeting can blow up an entire day, and I feel this in my bones.

“I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition, there's sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you're a maker, think of your own case. Don't your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don't. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.”

Not only are meetings expensive, but they reduce productivity. They slice your workday into small pieces, making it impossible to actually do your work let alone get into a state of flow.

The prolific Adam Grant also has some thoughts on meetings.

I could go on, but by now, you probably get the point.

Work meetings can kill productivity, waste money, and increase stress. So why do we end up in so many meetings?

The maker’s schedule vs. manager’s schedule.

Here’s a theory. In one of his popular essays, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, Paul explains that there are two types of schedules.

1. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. Typically, a manager’s schedule is cut into one-hour intervals where you change what you do every hour.

2. The maker’s schedule is for people who make things. People who make things require longer periods of free time. They can’t work properly when they are continuously interrupted by meetings. Having an hour here and an hour there is barely enough time to get started, let alone create.

Paul says that each of these schedule types works fine on its own, but problems arise when they meet.

“Since most powerful people operate on the manager's schedule, they're in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.”

As managers, we must resist the urge to impose our manager schedules on our maker’s schedules. We must also recognize that many of us in fact need maker schedules ourselves.

Creativity and great ideas can’t happen if you are stressed, busy, and rushed jumping from meeting to meeting with no time to even take a quick bathroom break.

We all need empty space in our week so we can think. It is this empty space where great ideas are born.

I am a manager with an incredible team who I love to support.

But I am also a passionate maker myself.

I think this is the case for many co-founders - they love to lead, but they still have a deep love for the thing that made them start a business in the first place - creating.

The pursuit of fewer meetings.

When reflecting on 2023, I realized that if I want to level up, optimize my days, be my best, most productive self, and be the best leader to my team, I can’t be in back-to-back meetings all day, every day.

Here are some things I am trying to eliminate unnecessary meetings.

Question if a meeting is necessary.

• Is there a clear objective or outcome for the meeting?

• Can this objective be achieved more efficiently through another communication channel?

• Is the information discussed relevant to all participants?

• Can all relevant participants attend?

• Is this a situation that requires real-time interaction, group input, or collaborative work?

• Is this an urgent issue that requires a meeting?

• Has the meeting information already been communicated through another channel?

• Is the cost worth the benefit of this meeting?

• Is this meeting happening because a concept isn’t clear? If so, is there another way to clarify it without a meeting?

If a meeting is indeed necessary.

I realize I have painted myself as a total meeting hater by now, but let me be clear - I know there is a time and place for meetings. Meetings can be productive when they are run well. Working for a remote company, I also see their value for team building and bonding.

So here are some first principles to make the most of meetings that are indeed necessary.

• Make a meeting agenda mandatory. The person who calls the meeting must include a clear agenda with the meeting invite. A great meeting agenda should clearly state the objective(s), agenda items, and actionable outcomes.

• Keep meetings to 30-minutes. Parkinson's Law states the work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion.

• Invite as few people as possible. Don’t disrupt a person’s flow by bringing them into a meeting they don’t need to attend.

“When leaders know how to lead great meetings, there's less time wasted and less frustration. We have more energy to do the work that matters, realize our full potential, and do great things.” - Justin Rosenstein