Why We're Anti-Meeting

Meetings sound like a good idea in theory—it’s a time to make sure everyone is on the same page, to share important news and information, and to get any questions out of they way—but after moving into work-from-home life, it seems like the number of meetings have gone up and the amount of productivity has gone down. Meetings can make your workplace less efficient. Here’s how:

A one hour meeting isn’t one hour

If you have 10 people attending a one hour meeting, that’s actually 10 hours of work you’re sacrificing. Each person who is sitting in on the meeting is giving up an hour of productivity. When scheduling a meeting, take time to consider—is this time better spent completing work? Look at the meetings each of your team members has on their schedule throughout the week. After the meetings, do they have time to complete the work they are assigned?

They contain irrelevant information

Chances are that your meetings include information that isn’t relevant to every party in attendance. Think through what information you need to share and who needs to receive that information before you set up a meeting. If it’s information that could be easily shared in an email, go that route instead. You can always offer a quick meeting for those that have any questions.

They decrease productivity

Studies show that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus after your workflow has been interrupted. That means that you should add 23 minutes to every meeting when you consider the time it will take your employees to get back into their workflow. If you have multiple meetings throughout the week, that time really adds up!

Here at Gradient, we have one weekly team meeting. Team members are welcome to check in as needed for help or guidance, but we try not to take up any more of our employees’ time than necessary. We also use this mindset with our clients. Minimizing the time spent in meetings has helped us to create a more creative, efficient, and productive workplace.