Why Your Calendar is Killing Your Productivity

If I had a dollar for every meeting I’ve attended that achieved absolutely nothing, I could retire to the Byron Bay tomorrow.

Australian businesses are literally talking themselves out of getting work done.

I estimated recently that my clients are collectively spending over $1.5 million per year on meetings that produce no tangible outcomes.

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 professionals 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 productive.

Here’s what nobody wants to admit about meetings: 80% of them are just performance anxiety disguised as collaboration.

Consider your most recent “strategy meeting.” How much actual strategic thinking happened? How many new ideas emerged?

The dirty secret of meeting culture is that most meetings exist to make managers feel like they’re in control, not to actually solve problems or make progress.

This isn’t collaboration – it’s collective procrastination for leaders who can’t communicate clearly outside of a formal setting. It’s management theatre, performed for an audience of captive staff.

The meeting that nearly broke my faith in corporate sanity.

I watched a sales team spend forty minutes in a meeting discussing why their previous meeting had run overtime.

The first meeting ran for ninety minutes. The agenda covered fifteen different projects, most of which only involved a handful of 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.

The rise of remote work has made the meeting problem exponentially worse.

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 unlimited 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 proliferation. What used to be a phone call is now a formal meeting with action items. Every day is fragmented into brief chunks between different sessions.

Here’s the part that really gets me fired up: the assumption that more discussion automatically leads to better decisions.

Over-collaboration is just as destructive as under-collaboration.

I worked with a creative agency that was so committed to “transparent communication” that developers were spending more time explaining their work than actually doing it.

Every concept needed to be presented in multiple meetings before it could move forward. The result was safe work that had been over-analysed into blandness. The innovative solutions died in the endless feedback loops.

Innovation doesn’t happen in conference rooms full of stakeholders.

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}.}}

“We should touch base next week” – 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.”

Here’s an opinion that won’t make me popular at HR conferences: most “collaborative” meetings are actually harmful to real teamwork.

Real innovation happens in quiet spaces where professionals can think deeply without the pressure of speaking up for an audience.

Collaboration isn’t sitting in a room brainstorming from scratch – it’s skilled workers bringing their best thinking to a focused discussion. The meetings that actually work are the ones where people come ready, not the ones where they come to figure things out together.

So what does effective meeting culture actually look like?

First, make meetings expensive to schedule.

The most productive teams I work with have simple rules: no meeting without a defined outcome, no recurring meetings without regular review, and no meetings longer than forty-five minutes without a documented reason.

Some organisations 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 immediate.

Second, distinguish between information sharing and actual decision-making.

Status updates don’t require live interaction.

The meetings that justify their time are the ones focused on creative challenges that require real-time interaction. Everything else – information sharing – should happen through written communication.

I worked with a consulting firm that replaced their weekly status meetings with a simple online dashboard. Meeting time dropped by half, and project communication actually improved. Everyone can see what’s happening without sitting through presentations.

Third, accept the fact that not everyone needs to be involved in every decision.

The obsession with stakeholder involvement has created meeting inflation where large groups discuss problems that could be resolved by the right people.

Consultation is important for strategic changes, but not every choice requires universal agreement. Most day-to-day issues should be made by the individuals closest to the work. They understand that broader input isn’t always useful perspectives.

The number that made me realise how broken meeting culture really is:

Calculate how much time you spend meeting about projects versus implementing solutions.

For most professionals, the ratio is terrifying. They’re spending four hours discussing every one hour of actual work.

Sometimes the ratio is even worse. High-performing companies flip this ratio. They spend minimal time in meetings and maximum time on actual work. The talking serves the doing, not the other way around.

That’s not efficiency – it’s organisational failure.

The emotional investment in meeting culture is worth examining.

For many managers, meetings provide a sense of relevance that actual work doesn’t offer. In a meeting, you can direct the conversation, demonstrate your knowledge, and feel central to team success.

Execution is often individual, uncertain, and doesn’t provide the same immediate feedback as leading a meeting. The meetings become evidence of your commitment, even if they don’t produce value.

Don’t get me wrong – some meetings are absolutely necessary.

The sessions that work are focused, thoroughly organised, and decision-focused. They bring together the necessary participants to solve problems that require immediate interaction.

Everything else is just organisational performance that consumes the time and energy that could be used on meaningful work. They’re careful about when to use them, disciplined about how to run them, and realistic about whether they’re valuable.

What I wish every executive understood about meetings:

Good meetings solve problems permanently rather than creating ongoing debate cycles.

Poor meetings generate more meetings.

Make every discussion earn its place in your day.

The future of workplace effectiveness depends on it.

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