The Role of Time Management in Reducing Workplace Stress

The $50 Billion Meeting Problem Nobody Wants to Fix

Another day, another pointless meeting that could have been an email.

We’re in the middle of a meeting epidemic, and it’s destroying Australian workplace effectiveness.

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: the majority of them are just performance anxiety disguised as collaboration.

Remember that last “touch base” you sat through. How much actual strategic thinking happened? How many actionable outcomes emerged?

I’ll bet the first ten minutes were spent on updates, the middle section was dominated by whoever loves to hear themselves talk, and the final portion was a rushed attempt to assign actions that were probably unnecessary in the first place.

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

Here’s a true story that perfectly captures the insanity of modern meeting culture:

I watched a sales team spend an hour 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 some 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.

Before Zoom and Teams, the inconvenience of gathering people in one room created natural limits. That friction meant you only called meetings when they were genuinely necessary.

I’ve seen departments where it’s literally impossible to find a half-day block of uninterrupted time in anyone’s calendar.

The result? Meeting explosion. What used to be a brief discussion is now a scheduled session with agendas. Every day is fragmented into hour-long chunks between endless conferences.

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

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

I worked with a marketing department 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 predictable work that had been committee-approved into blandness. The creative breakthroughs died in the endless feedback loops.

Breakthrough thinking doesn’t happen in conference rooms full of stakeholders.

Meeting culture has developed its own language that disguises waste as wisdom.

“Let’s circle back on this” – 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}.}}

“I’ll send out a calendar invite” – 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.”

But here’s where I’ll probably lose some people: most “collaborative” meetings are actually counterproductive to real teamwork.

Real creative work happens in focused 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 time-limited discussion. The meetings that actually work are the ones where people come prepared, 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.

I love the organisations that have instituted “meeting-free mornings” where conference calls are simply not allowed.

Some teams assign a dollar cost to meetings based on the salaries of attendees. When you see that your “quick sync” is costing $500 per hour, you start to think differently about whether it’s necessary. The quality improvements are usually obvious.

Second, distinguish between status reports and actual problem-solving.

The majority of meeting time is wasted on information that could be shared more effectively through email.

The meetings that justify their time are the ones focused on problems that require immediate feedback. Everything else – status reports – should happen through documented processes.

I worked with a consulting firm that replaced their weekly team updates with a simple online dashboard. Meeting time dropped by two-thirds, and project visibility actually improved. Everyone can see what’s happening without sitting through meeting discussions.

Stop treating inclusion as the highest virtue.

The best managers I know are careful about who they include in different types of decisions.

Consultation is important for strategic changes, but not every choice requires group consensus. Most operational decisions 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:

Track the ratio of talking time to actual work on your key initiatives.

I’ve worked with teams where people were working weekends to complete tasks because their business days were consumed by discussions.

Sometimes the ratio is even worse. Effective organisations flip this ratio. They spend limited time in meetings and concentrated time on implementation. The talking serves the doing, not the other way around.

That’s not productivity – it’s madness.

Why are people so addicted to meetings?

There’s also a comfort in meetings. If you’re in meetings all day, you can’t be blamed for not producing work.

Implementation is often independent, uncertain, and doesn’t provide the same social feedback as facilitating a meeting. The meetings become evidence of your commitment, even if they don’t produce results.

Look, I’m not completely opposed to meetings.

The discussions that work are purposeful, thoroughly organised, and action-oriented. They bring together the right people to make decisions that require real-time interaction.

Everything else is just corporate ritual that consumes the time and energy that could be spent on productive work. They’re careful about when to use them, strict about how to run them, and realistic about whether they’re working.

What I wish every manager understood about meetings:

Effective meetings create decisions that reduces the need for follow-up sessions.

Poor meetings generate more meetings.

Choose accordingly.

The future of workplace productivity depends on it.

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