"In recent years, Shopify cancelled all recurring meetings with more than two people to free up employees to work on other tasks. At Block, CEO Jack Dorsey declared Tuesdays a company‑wide no‑meeting day to shift the balance from "talking about work" to actually doing it. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has vowed to cancel all recurring meetings every six months, adding back only ones that are "absolutely necessary." At Southwest Airlines, CEO Bob Jordan made a public declaration that meetings are not work. He blocks out some of his own afternoons from meetings. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, meanwhile, encouraged employees to "kill meetings" in his 2024 letter to shareholders."
"Such actions may seem like an overzealous crusade against a fundamental-if loathed-feature of the modern workplace, but Rebecca Hinds, author of the new book Your Best Meeting Ever, says these bosses might not be going far enough. The Stanford PhD, who has studied meetings for 15 years and advised nearly 100 companies, says that organizations could benefit from what she calls "Armeetingeddon" or a "Meeting Doomsday"-tearing meetings down completely and starting from scratch."
"According to her research, individual contributors, managers, and executives spent an average of 3.7, 5.8, and 5.3 hours per week, respectively, in unproductive meetings in 2024-an increase of 118%, 87%, and 51% since 2019. "As knowledge workers, we spend 85 to 90% of our time collaborating," she says. "There's no activity that we spend more time on than meetings, and yet they're highly, highly dysfunctional.""
Major companies have canceled or severely limited recurring meetings to reclaim employee time and focus. Examples include canceling recurring meetings with more than two people, instituting company-wide no-meeting days, and purging recurring sessions to keep only absolutely necessary ones. CEOs have publicly blocked meeting time and urged employees to eliminate unnecessary meetings. Research found individual contributors, managers, and executives averaged 3.7, 5.8, and 5.3 hours per week in unproductive meetings in 2024, with large increases since 2019. Collaboration consumes roughly 85–90% of knowledge workers' time, yet meetings remain highly dysfunctional and visible as "productivity theater."
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