The average knowledge worker spends 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings. That’s roughly four full working days wasted every month. In meetings that could have been emails.

Meetings aren’t inherently bad. Bad meetings are bad. Good meetings produce decisions, alignment, and progress that can’t be achieved any other way.

Here’s how to run the good kind.

Rule One: Does This Meeting Need to Exist?

Before scheduling any meeting, ask: “What would happen if this meeting didn’t occur?”

If the answer is “nothing, really” — don’t schedule it. Send an email, post in Slack, or write a brief document instead.

Meetings should exist for one of three purposes:

1. Making a decision that requires discussion
2. Aligning multiple people on a shared understanding
3. Generating ideas that benefit from real-time interaction

If your meeting doesn’t serve one of these purposes, it shouldn’t be a meeting.

The 25-Minute Standard

Default to 25 minutes, not 30. Default to 50 minutes, not 60.

Parkinson’s law applies: work expands to fill the time available. A topic that takes 25 minutes in a 25-minute meeting somehow takes 60 minutes in a 60-minute meeting.

The shorter time forces focus. It eliminates the fifteen minutes of preamble, the tangential discussions, and the gradual drift into unrelated topics.

The five or ten minutes between meetings also gives people transition time. Back-to-back 60-minute meetings are exhausting. Back-to-back 25-minute meetings with five-minute gaps are manageable.

The Agenda Is Non-Negotiable

No agenda, no meeting. Period.

The agenda should be shared before the meeting and include:

• The specific decision or outcome expected
• Three to five discussion points
• Who’s responsible for each point
• Any pre-reading or preparation required

If you can’t articulate what the meeting should produce, you’re not ready for the meeting.

The Right People (And Only the Right People)

Every person in the meeting should either:

• Be needed to make the decision
• Have information essential to the discussion
• Be directly affected by the outcome

Everyone else should get meeting notes afterward.

The “invite everyone just in case” approach creates meetings with fifteen people where three are engaged and twelve are checking email. This wastes the time of the twelve and creates the illusion of inclusion without the reality.

Start on Time, End on Time

Start at the scheduled time regardless of who’s present. Waiting five minutes for latecomers punishes everyone who arrived on time and teaches people that punctuality doesn’t matter.

End at the scheduled time even if discussion continues. If the topic isn’t resolved, schedule a follow-up. Meetings that run over disrespect everyone’s subsequent commitments.

The No-Laptop Rule

For in-person meetings, consider asking participants to close laptops and put phones away.

This sounds extreme. It dramatically improves meeting quality. People who are looking at screens aren’t fully present. They miss context, ask questions that were already answered, and extend the meeting by requiring repetition.

If someone doesn’t need to be fully present, they don’t need to be in the meeting.

Standing Meetings

For regular check-ins (daily standups, weekly syncs), consider standing. Not as a health measure — as a time constraint.

Standing meetings are naturally shorter because standing is mildly uncomfortable. A standing fifteen-minute check-in is far more efficient than a seated thirty-minute version.

Capture Decisions and Actions

Every meeting should produce a brief document listing:

• Decisions made
• Action items with owners and deadlines
• Any follow-up meetings needed

Without this, the same topics resurface in the next meeting because nobody documented the resolution.

Send this summary within 24 hours. One person should be responsible for this before the meeting starts.

Recurring Meeting Audit

Every recurring meeting should justify its existence quarterly. Ask the participants:

• Is this meeting still necessary?
• Is the frequency right?
• Are the right people attending?
• What would we lose if we cancelled it?

Many recurring meetings continue out of inertia long after their original purpose has been served. Audit ruthlessly.

The Cultural Shift

Good meeting culture starts at the top. When leadership models short, focused meetings with clear agendas, the rest of the organisation follows.

When leadership runs rambling, agenda-free meetings that start late and run over, that behaviour propagates.

Model the meetings you want to attend. Others will follow the example — or at least stop inviting you to the bad ones.