Make meetings a last resort and cut their length by a third

A growing product team realized their calendar was a wall of blue. They piloted “No‑Meeting Wednesdays,” and the first week felt odd. By week three, engineers delivered more and managers learned to bundle requests into Tuesday and Thursday. A bright red timer showed minutes disappearing, and meetings ended when it beeped—even if a sentence was mid‑air.

One manager swapped the weekly sit‑down for a 15‑minute stand‑up. Three prompts drove it: what’s up, numbers, and stuck. When ‘stuck’ items needed depth, two people stayed after and everyone else left. The group laughed when someone’s phone buzzed and they reached reflexively. They’d already agreed: no phones in meetings. It felt strict at first, then freeing.

A small story sealed the shift. The facilities lead said, “Since we started timing, our 60‑minute ops review now takes 22 minutes.” The timer made everyone more concise, and the written agenda listed decisions as questions, so they stopped meandering.

The research backs these practices. Stand‑up meetings create urgency and reduce time without harming decision quality. Visible timers and explicit time boxes counter Parkinson’s law, the tendency for work to expand to fill the allotted time. Fewer attendees reduce coordination costs. And device bans prevent the attention residue that lingers after context‑switching. Making meetings a last resort doesn’t mean you hate collaboration; it means you value everyone’s minutes.

Block a weekly no‑meeting window for real work, then only accept meetings with a written purpose, decision‑focused questions, and a tight attendee list. Run status as 15‑minute stand‑ups with a visible timer and end on the beep, spinning off deep dives to smaller groups. Ask everyone to pocket phones. Try this for the next two weeks and watch the wall of blue recede.