5 tips to fix meetings that waste time

"Managers can spend up to 23 hours a week in meetings. Yet a recent study found 70% of meetings keep employees from valuable work, and that 71% of managers reported meetings to be "costly and unproductive." Other sources report meeting overload costs an estimated $37 billion in productivity losses per year. Similar research echoes this, pointing to the psychological and cognitive toll of unproductive meetings: lost focus, delayed decisions, shallow work, and chronic burnout."

"The problem isn't just the number of meetings-it's the lack of discipline around what meetings are for. When team meetings try to do everything-brainstorming, decision-making, status updates, conflict resolution, and social connection-they end up doing nothing particularly well. Worse, they sap time from crucial areas such as deep thinking, team coaching, problem-solving, decision making, and actual execution. The fix isn't expanding or tightening agendas. It's about making bold fixes: cutting what doesn't belong, investing time where it matters."

Time and attention are the most depleted resources in modern workplaces. Back-to-back meetings, calendar congestion, and constant context-switching create a time deficit that undermines performance, energy, and decision quality. Managers can spend up to 23 hours weekly in meetings; 70% of meetings keep employees from valuable work, and meeting overload costs an estimated $37 billion per year. Meetings that try to do everything—brainstorming, decisions, updates, conflict resolution, and social connection—fail at all. The remedy is to cut unnecessary meetings, design focused agendas, invest time where it matters, and create team norms that prioritize value over volume.

Read at Fast Company