No agenda, no attenda

The internet tells me 83% of employees spend 33% of their week in meetings.

Like most widespread online stats, I have no idea if this is true or not. But it sounds about right… For a 9-5, that means 2-3 hours/day in meetings.

It goes without saying that that's A LOT of time.

It's a whole workweek every single month. It's enough time to learn a new language in a year. To train for a triathlon.

It's about how much time people spend on social media every day, and we all know we spend way too much time on social media.

Now, the problem of course isn't meetings per se. The problem is useless meetings. Or meetings that could've been an email. Or meetings that didn't require you (and 15 other people) to be there.

It costs nothing to invite someone to be in a meeting, most people have a hard time saying no to them, so "meeting bloat" happens. Suddenly, our calendars get fractured by commitments, and our productivity tanks.

Fellow reader Erik shares a tip he calls "No agenda, no attenda" for that specific problem:

I like this a lot.

I was once in a project with a client and their average meeting had 10+ people. It wasn't rare for the meeting to bloat to 15 or even 20 people. Needless to say, most of these people shouldn't be there and had nothing to contribute, but in that organizational culture it was rude to not invite everyone tangentially related to the topic.

It was HELL.

And when we helped them change it, everyone was thankful (except for a few particularly unproductive workers who made it their day job to be meeting attendants).

Dealing with the nuances of saying no to meetings

So far, so good… But the truth is that if saying no to meetings didn't have any drawbacks, everyone would be doing it.

Reality, though, has social aspects to it.

For instance, if I'm the most inexperienced person in a team and I haven't established my credibility yet, I'm probably not picking this battle. Especially if the org culture is fond of large meetings.

My tip, then, is to test the waters.

Can you apply the "No agenda, no attenda" principle to ONE meeting and see what happens?

Can you then test a few different ways to say no to other meetings and see if any is particularly well received?

Can you keep track of all the work you're doing while not attending meetings and show it to your boss so they can see the opportunity cost more clearly?

Each small test can be thought of as a way for you to:

• See the social response of setting your own boundaries to meetings

• Training the team to know they're going to get some pushback from you when proposing a useless meeting

• Making yourself see the benefits of having 5-10 extra productive hours per week

It's easy to go with the flow and just accept that "this is how things are".

It's also easy to think in black and white and think that what I'm saying is that you should say no to 90% of meetings starting tomorrow.

The problem is that your time (and focus) is way too valuable, and too many meetings are almost useless.

If meetings take a lot of your workweek, it's your duty to the company and to your own career to test this out a little bit.

Perhaps the resistance is too strong and you'll have to suck it up.

But maybe, just maybe, everyone around you is also fed up with all that wasted time and no one has the courage to change things up.

If this is the case, not only you'll open up large swaths of calendar space, you might even be thanked by colleagues, praised by your boss and well-seen by the higher-ups.

Big promise, I know.

But one worth testing!

Keep working smarter.