Why You Are Wasting Time in Meetings

Companies waste a staggering $37 billion every year on pointless meetings. In this episode of Everything is Logistics, Blythe tackles why this happens and shares how companies like Shopify are fighting back. 

She breaks down the science behind why we waste so much time in meetings and offers practical tips for declining invites without burning bridges. 

Based on her own experience, she shares her no-meetings-Monday rule and other strategies to take back control of your calendar.

LINKS:

• Meetings Are Wasting Your Time: Here's How To Get It Back

WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Meeting Culture Crisis
• 4:23 The Cost of Bad Meetings
• 9:13 Shopify's Solution
• 14:17 Meeting Science
• 19:43 Polite Rejection Tips
• 25:00 Action Steps

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

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Blythe Brumleve: 0:05

you've attempted to watch him TV in any form or fashion over the last few years, you can escape Rod Dyrdek and his show Ridiculousness. So when he was a recent guest on the My First Million podcast, I had to kind of do a double take before I hit play on the episode. That episode with Rob has made his life's mission to optimize his time and his health. It led me into my own sort of time management rabbit hole of why modern work culture has so many damn meetings, and what to do about getting some of that time back. Welcome into another episode of everything. Is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I'm your host, Blythe Milligan, formerly Blythe Brumleve. I recently just got married, so this is one of my first shows back where I have to introduce myself in a new way, but very, very proud wife now, and happy to share some of those updates with you all. I did post a couple photos to my Instagram and LinkedIn if you want to check out some of the fabulous work by a great photographer that made us look very good. But that's neither here nor there. I really wanted to have this show to talk about why we spend so much time in meetings, what to do about getting some of that time back and just sort of the overall, I guess, the moral ambiguity around it, or how to not sound rude when you say no to a meeting request. So that's what the show is going to be about. And so I want to preface this conversation with the fact that I wrote an email newsletter about this year and a half ago, and I can confirm that meeting culture still stinks, and it is just permeated in a variety of different industries, logistics included. So let's I want to go through a little bit of a rundown and recap what that email was all about and why it still persists to this day that we default to a meeting instead of trying to figure things out for ourselves or the alternative. And somewhat shocking that this doesn't already happen, but how to only invite the people who are going to be able to answer the questions to the meeting instead of wasting everyone's time? So let's set some baselines. I want to talk about how much time do we actually spend in meetings? And according to one of my favorite tools, Otter AI, which is one of those note taking apps that automatically joins a meeting whenever you are it records the conversation. Sometimes it sends out a copy to everyone that's on the call. I recommend not doing this, because sometimes I can create some kind of sticky situations. I only send the otter notes the meeting recaps to people who request it, but otter estimates that 15% of an organization's time is spent in meeting, in meetings that is across the entire organization, because they go on to explain that most upper management employees regularly spend 50% of their time in meetings, and more than 35% of employees found that they waste around two to five hours per day on meetings and calls, but they achieve nothing to show and frivolous meetings come at a cost too. At an estimated $37 billion is lost every single year to unproductive meetings. So it begs the question, why do we waste so much time in meetings? And the short answer is, unproductive. Meetings have been a part of work work culture for a very long time, especially when you get into sort of the upper management side of things, where the majority of your day is kind of spent in meetings. 50% is what otters. Otter AI stat was 50% of your day is spent in meetings. That is crazy to think about. One example that I did want to bring to light is Shopify, because they recognize this issue, you know, more and more, and they were one of the first companies in the public eye to really challenge this notion of recurring meetings just for the sake of recurring meetings. And so Shopify. They the company made news earlier in the year when its CEO decided to ditch all recurring meetings with two or more people. They just got rid of them from the jump, and then from this that following spring, they released data on how the company has saved 322,000 hours and increased delivery on 25% more projects because of all of the time that they were able to get back real business results by cutting out unproductive meetings. Now there was also a recent Freakonomics episode that breaks down how our modern work culture has evolved into having so many of these meetings and how to run them better so you don't waste all of that time in that Freakonomics episode, which I'll drop a link to that episode in the show notes. They do have a recap video that's a little over five minutes long, so I'll link to that because it is super interesting to hear sort of this. Science Behind meetings, and that is exactly the title of the book of the yes that they had on the show. And it's called in the surprising science of meetings. Steven rogelberg, he offers research back strategies to improve meeting effectiveness by addressing common challenges like inefficient planning and lack of engagement. The book highlights several key points, including covering clear objectives and agendas. I think that's probably the number one thing that I see in meetings, is that the default is, let's just jump on a call and talk it out. In reality, that that is so harmful to the overall discussion because it forces it creates a situation where you're talking about topics instead of talking about the goal that you want to achieve at the end of the meeting. So by setting clear objectives and agendas ahead of time, then that can drastically reduce the amount of time that you're spending in that meeting to begin with. They go on to say, from, you know, just a few takeaways from the book that meetings should have specific goals and attendees need to know the intended outcomes, purposeful agendas that prioritize essential topics help keep discussions focused and productive. So they go on to list a few more tips that I'll run through really quick here. Number two is optimizing the meeting length. Research suggests shorter meetings, such as 48 or 50 minute sessions, are more efficient. There's a thing called Parkinson's Law, where work expands to fill the time available that applies to meetings, and encouraging to have concise discussions is really the ultimate goal in the meetings that you want to have. You know, the default calendar on Google, for example, is an hour. You can adjust that in your settings to where you're doing 25 minutes, which is what I personally do, or you can do 30 minutes or 40 minutes by by setting that default time. Parkinson's Law to set Parkinson's Law says that maybe you're asking a question, or maybe you have a goal that can be achieved by two people in the meeting in 15 minutes, and if you think that goal could be achieved in 15 minutes, then only set the meeting for 15 minutes. It sounds simple enough, but I think so many of us are just such. We go to the software default when we need to sort of think about the when, the where, the high and the how and the why ahead of time, before defaulting to let's jump on a call. Let's jump on a meeting to sort it out. Now, obviously a lot of this advice doesn't necessarily apply to say, like a broker, for example, where a broker has to answer the phone call immediately, drivers have to answer phone calls immediately, or preferably immediately or as soon as possible. There's also other jobs and professions that don't necessarily are bogged down by a lot of meetings, but in the business that I work in, which is podcasting and website management. There are a lot of times where a lot of my clients, they want, or a lot of my potential podcast guests, they want to hop on a call, they want to talk they want to talk about, you know, what we're going to talk about. And that is something that I've I've had to sort of massage that situation. Whenever I do get asked those questions, I'll cover more of that. Are you in freight sales with a book of business, looking for a new home? Or perhaps you're a freight agent in need of a better partnership? These are the kinds of conversations we're exploring in our podcast interview series called The freight agent trenches, sponsored by SPI logistics. Now I can tell you all day that SBI is one of the most successful logistics firms in North America who helps their agents with back office operations such as admin, finance, it and sales. But I would much rather you hear it directly from SBI freight agents themselves. And what better way to do that than by listening to the experienced freight agents tell their stories behind the how and the why they joined SPI hit the freight agent link in our show notes to listen to these conversations, or if you're ready to make the jump, visit SPI three. Pl.com back to the book on the surprising science of meetings. Number three on this list is participation and engagement. Active participation is critical for effective meetings. Rogelberg recommends fostering a safe environment that courage is input from all participants to enhance collaboration and decision making, which I think is is something. It sounds so simple to say, but how many times have you been in a meeting yourself, or how many times have you looked around the room at a meeting, or maybe even looked on a zoom call, and how many of those people are actively listening, actively paying attention, and can actually solve the problem of why you're having the meeting to begin with? So that's something to keep in mind, is participation and engagement. You only really want to invite the people that are going to be able to answer the question. Questions that you have or the goal that you're trying to achieve, anybody else you're just wasting their time. So number four on this list, and there's six total, so we'll run through these a little quickly. Number four is leadership and facilitation. Meeting facilitators should focus on guiding discussions and managing group dynamics to ensure productive conversations. Leaders often overestimate their effectiveness, so regular feedback from participants is essential. I kind of attribute this to almost as you're moderating a panel where, as you know, pay attention next time. Maybe you're at a conference and you see the moderator and they have two or three, maybe four or five panelists on up on stage, they have to make sure that that every one of those people can have an equal input, an equal say. You wouldn't throw somebody up on a panel if they're not going to contribute anything. So from a leadership perspective, you need to be able to have those people on your personal stage, whether it's in a zoom call or an in person meeting, that can manage or come up with a solution to the problem that you're trying to solve or the goal that you're trying to achieve, and by incorporating everyone in that discussion, then you're making it worthwhile for everyone who is in there to actually participate in the discussion, but then also by asking for feedback. I think that's really, really important, because not everybody, I mean, I do interviews, I moderate panels, and I've done it for a long time, so they're little tips and tricks that you can pick up along the way. But for a lot of managers, they're not doing the same things I'm doing, so their practice or their your direct feedback to those managers or to those folks, or maybe you're in that position where you want to get that feedback, you really want to be proactive about it. I mean, if you're an employee participating in one of these meetings and the leadership doesn't ask that question, I probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't give it unless it's absolutely detrimental to you, and in a sense that you're participating in a bunch of meetings that you have no input, and you you don't really have a solution to that problem that they're trying to solve. So you politely ask to be excused for meetings like that. I probably wouldn't comment unless the leader actually asked. And then, even then, you have to be a little bit delicate with giving criticism, because not everybody takes criticism in the right way, especially if you're criticizing your boss. So that is a little bit of like sticky territory to to work around. So I would, I would actually like to flip it back to the leaders that are in that position, that you should be the ones that are asking for the feedback and not taking it personally when you do get that feedback, I think it's really important in order to get that kind of regular feedback so you know where to improve and where you where you're you're missing some gaps. So that, I thought that that one was a really good takeaway from this book, The surprising science of meetings. The next one on this list is innovative formats, alternatives like stand up meetings or walking meetings can boost energy and creativity. Virtual meetings also require careful planning to maintain engagement and avoid multitasking, which I think we're all guilty of, that, especially when we're on a remote meeting and we're not exactly sure why we were invited to the first in the first place. So there's a lot of multitasking. There's a lot of, you know, side text going on, off to the side, maybe you're answering some emails at the same time. If you're doing any of those things, it's probably a signal that you don't belong in that meeting, or that meeting is probably running too long because you're getting distracted. I do really like the idea of having walking meetings where you are outside, you're getting fresh air, you're on the call, and you're actively listening, but you're also multitasking in a way that's not disruptive to the meeting itself, if that makes sense. So innovative formats, I really like that idea, especially the stand up meetings, because they just, you know, they get your blood flow, and we're sitting all day. We're kind of sedentary. As far as you know, most office workers in their their lifestyle where they're not walking around a ton. So I love the idea of having stand up meetings and also walking meetings, where if you do, if you are still lucky enough to work from home, where you take calls while you're walking the dogs or you're taking a walk around the block. I really love that approach. And then last one on this list is continuous improvement, regular feedback and post meeting evaluations help refine meeting practices over time, ensuring that meetings evolve to meet the needs of the participants in the organization. Because there were a lot of you know, just those insane stats that I read off to you earlier, that most upper management employees regularly spend 50% of their time in meetings, and then more than 35% of employees found that they waste two to five hours per day in meetings and calls, but they achieve nothing to show so let's talk about how to make those meetings more productive. Now we did list it or list a couple of those, those i. Ideas from that book, The surprising science of meetings. But I think it's also important to talk about not just Parkinson's Law, where you're the work is going to fill the amount of time that you get. It kind of goes back to that point. Don't set an hour long meeting if it's going to take 20 minutes to solve it. But you also want to think about how to not sound like a jerk when you are inundated with meeting requests, and you can't possibly do all of them, or maybe they're not worth your time in doing them, and so you really want to, you know, approach this in, I guess, a thoughtful way is probably the best way that I could explain it, because I whenever I would get meeting requests, or I would approach someone to come on my show or to have a sales call with them, I would just send them my calendar link. I figured it was the easiest for everyone involved. If they're interested, then they could just click the link and book it right away. But what that kind of and what the psychology behind that is, and what I found out, and I've since changed my approach to this, is that it can put you in sort of the dominant position. And so if you are just blindly sending out your calendar link to someone, I mean, imagine getting an email from someone that you only have kind of a loose knowledge of, but you're getting an email from them they're demanding a meeting with you, and they're giving the calendar link to you, you that's really off putting. And so instead, there are a few different ways. There are now three ways that I handle it, and I put these, not three ways, one way with three options in the same email or as I'm talking through, you know, some of these, setting up a potential meeting. And so one of those is, I suggest two days and times along with it, and I do it in the same sentence. So I suggest, Hey, are you available Tuesday and Wednesday? I have one o'clock open on both days. Alternatively, can you send me your calendar link and I could find a time that works best, or if it works best for you, here's a link to my calendar. And so you're putting the ball, and I say all of that in one sentence. And so hey, how does this time work for you? If that doesn't work, do you mind sending me your calendar link? And if you don't have one, here's a link to my calendar, or if you just want to get it over with, that's what you're kind of insinuating to the person, without being so demanding about it, you are giving a suggestion. You're putting the ball in their court, so then that way, they can answer it in a way that makes the most sense for them, without it feeling like you're the one controlling everything. I mean, at the end of the day, like you're asking folks to give some of their time away to you when they could be doing something else. And so that is a that's a way that I discovered about a year ago, and I've used that in my email correspondence since, and I haven't had any pushback. Now, to be fair, I didn't really have pushback before, when I would just blindly send my calendar link to the folks I wanted to talk to, but I also it resulted in a lot of ghosting, and so I think that that was where my communication gap was missing. I've seen much higher success rate now that I offer, you know, a few different options, and I really put the ball in their court where I want to, I want to get a meeting booked with the appropriate people as fast and efficiently as possible, but you still have to be conscious and how that message is delivered to the end person. So I really like that method. Hopefully you find it, you know, I guess appropriate for your work situation. I think there's also moments when you have to politely decline a meeting request, there's a search phrase. I actually found this out just recently. Did you know The search phrase politely decline a meeting that you know politely decline a meeting that keyword phrase has more than 1.4 million search results on Google. Brokering success demands a battle ready strategy Ty TMS equips freight brokers with the ultimate battle station for conquering a tough market. With Tai, brokers gain access to a comprehensive platform where raid intelligence and quote history converge on a single screen. It's not just a page, it's a strategic command center designed to help brokers win. Thai equips your team with all of the data they need to negotiate with confidence and allows them to communicate directly with carriers and customers from a simple control base, revolutionize the way your brokers perform by giving them a competitive advantage with Thai TMS. For more info, go to Tai software.com backslash battle stations, and we also have a link for you in the show notes to sign up for a demo. So it's safe to say that a lot of companies are having or a lot of people are having a hard time dealing with the influx of meetings that they get. How to navigate that and how to be polite about declining a meeting. Request. There's one example that I like to give, and this comes from Justin Welsh. He is very like he's very popular on LinkedIn, he's very popular over on x, and he lists out polite ways to decline a meeting. And there is a couple tips that I wanted to read off for you, and so you number one is you want to feel confident about your reason for not attending. You don't want to share reasons for declining a meeting beyond I can't attend, but the meeting organizer might still ask. That's why you should feel entirely confident about your choice to decline the meeting before doing so, which can be really tough. I struggle with it still to this day, even though I have canned responses of how to say no to a meeting request, it still sometimes it really bothers me, and I have a high amount of anxiety before I hit send on that email. Then the next option is you can figure out if a meeting is truly necessary to begin with, most people default to, let's just hop on a call and talk it out, find out if the meeting is actually needed to begin with, I can't tell you how many meetings I've gotten out of by just asking clarifying questions or asking follow up questions. Hey, can you tell me a little bit more about this, and then we can see if a meeting makes sense. That that's the sort of the terminology and the phrasing that I use. How often have you thought there's a this quote goes on to say, How often have you thought this meeting could have been an email, and we've all been there, and so it's not exactly a pleasant feeling, but sometimes there is a way to respond to that request by just asking additional clarifying questions to figure out if you need to be there to begin with, another way to decline meetings or politely decline a meeting, is to suggest another time, another time that works for you. I don't know if it's just me, but I get a ton of meeting requests for Mondays and Fridays. I have a hard and fast rule, no meetings on Mondays and Fridays, absolutely none. Because Mondays is when I'm handling my accounting and my financing for my business. So I, frankly, can't, I cannot take away time from those important tasks in order to, you know, placate a pop, you know, a possible sales call. So I structure my weeks, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, are the only days that I take meetings. And then I try to if a meeting time doesn't necessarily work, I try to suggest another time, on one of those days where I already have other meetings, because of the nature that of the work that I do, I have to set aside dedicated time to handle my business, to handle creative, to handle writing, to handle content recording like this and to be able to code switch is really tough. To go from a sales meeting to recording a podcast is tough for me, and so knowing that I like to create a buffer, I like to batch all of my shows, you know, recording on one day out of the week or two days out of the week, or only having meetings on, you know, afternoons on Tuesdays and Wednesdays was just pretty much my go to any any Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday after 1pm is typically when I will take 95% of My sales or client calls. My clients know this. I communicated in advance. Now, obviously we make exceptions for emergency type situations, but knock on wood, that doesn't happen very often. The last one on the list, or there's actually two that says, say no, but And so no, I can't make this meeting within instead, you phrase it, although I can't make this meeting, could we try something else instead? So making another suggestion, which is kind of similar to proposing another time or asking a clarifying question to decide if you really need to be involved in this meeting. It's so quick for someone to send an email and say, Hey, can you hop on a call 1pm with this customer, and it's like, Why? Why do I need to be there? Okay, what questions are and when I get a question like that, Hey, okay, what questions are you trying to answer? What are you hoping to what kind of goals are you hoping to solve? You know, especially if it's a co worker asking them, those clarifying questions can often help them answer those questions themselves, or get the answer from the client that they want you to hop on a call with. A lot of times this does happen, especially if you're working in marketing, where the sales team just wants you to sit in on a meeting. And you know, yes, sometimes those are very valuable experiences, but there are other times when it really is just a time suck. There are a couple different templates in this, in this link, and I'll link to it in the show notes, because there one example that it's perfect. It says, Hi, you know, meeting organizers name, so whoever is asking you for this, here's a sample of it says, Thanks for inviting. Inviting me to this meeting. Unfortunately, I'm unable to attend, but I'd like to invite my colleague, such and such in my place. Would that work for you? So that's for sending somebody else in your place. It might not be the best situation. Your coworker might feel a little annoyed that you are volunteering them for this meeting, but that's kind of up to the coworker to decide if that is a suitable thing for you to do. I would honestly default to asking the coworker first before sending an email like this. Another template that I thought was really nice is that they said, hi. You know, meeting organizer name, thanks for inviting me to this meeting, although I won't be available, I understand the importance of this meeting, and I'd like to speak with you about everything beforehand. When are you free for about insert, you know, a few minutes that feels right for you. If you can see this calendar, if you can see the organizers calendar, you can also suggest a free time for both of you and set a certain amount of time. That's a recurring thing of when I'm looking at a lot of these different notes is why and how people ask for the meeting. Talked about how they just default to it, but also the goal that you want to accomplish, because you need the people in that room that can accomplish that goal and can answer those questions. And then again, it goes back to setting a time that is appropriate, don't default to the calendar software of an hour or 30 minutes. When if it could take 10 minutes, then that's the 10 minutes that you take. So avoid those ways of like sounding like a jerk, because a lot of people are looking for ways to politely decline a meeting. So I think that that about wraps it up. I know that I've still struggle with this, but I think that a few of these sort of, if I if I'm going to recap a lot of what was said here is that there is a lot of time, billions of dollars, that's being wasted. We have recurring meetings on a calendar, and a lot of us aren't really sure why. And so as an organization, if you're looking to be more productive, if you're looking to increase ROI, I would take a hard look at all of your recurring meetings, and I would suggest doing the Shopify route, clearing it all out, and then only adding back in the meetings that are absolutely necessary, and then only including the people who are absolutely necessary to answer the goal of the meeting in the first place, and then setting the time that is appropriate for each of those people within the meeting to feel like they've reasonably contributed to the ultimate goal of that meeting. So I hope that this was valuable for you guys. I've been really wanting to record this episode for a while, because I still think there's so much time that we wasted meetings, and there is a lot of good that can come from meetings. And it's one of those things where it's then it sort of goes back to the office argument of, are we going to all work in office because it's better for collaboration, or can we still work remotely? Or can we do some kind of a hybrid? All of those debates are still happening, but it still results in unproductive meetings when you get a lot of folks involved who don't necessarily need to be there. So it's about being more conscious with our time, how we spend it, how we invest in it. And if you're anything like Shopify, you can sort of gut it all out, only add back what's necessary, and then see a tremendous amount of ROI and the projects that you complete, and the bottom line of your revenue, of your business, and keeping everyone hyper focused with your eye on the ball. So hopefully you all enjoyed this. That's another episode of everything is logistics, and be on the lookout for more episodes in the future. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already. And thank you guys for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics.com and in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co worker's child, a neighbor down the street or stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website. Well, that doesn't happen at Digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009 but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place, to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as$1,500 along with ongoing website. Management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight, marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digital dispatch.io, just check out the pricing page once you arrive, and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go jags. You.