Three meetings I always say no to
A short rule that has saved me about a day a week.
I have three rules about meetings. Each one is a meeting I do not take, without exception. The rules collectively save me about a day a week, and I have never regretted any of them.
The three#
A meeting to decide whether to have a meeting. If the question is serious enough to warrant a calendar invite, it is serious enough to warrant a draft of the actual decision in writing first.
A meeting with no agenda, sent by someone I have not met. There is nothing wrong with the sender; they have a system, and the system asks me to subsidise it. I decline politely.
A recurring meeting that I have not personally agreed to in the last six weeks. Most of these self-perpetuate past their usefulness. I write back asking what we would lose by cancelling the next one.
The framing#
The default for a meeting should be a written exchange, not the other way around. The exception is the meeting that requires real human presence — a hard conversation, a kickoff, a quarterly review. I take those without resistance.
What I do instead#
A long voice memo, a thoughtful Linear comment, or a half-page document shared in advance. Each of these has a higher ceiling than a meeting and a lower cost.