The feeling of being over-scheduled is a symptom of running ineffective meetings with no clear purpose. These bad meetings create new problems that then spawn more meetings to fix them, creating a vicious cycle of wasted time. The solution is better meetings, not fewer.

Believing traditional weekly 1-on-1s are inefficient and repetitive, V0's leader eliminated them. He favors discussing shared topics in group settings (like a Slack huddle) and reserves direct 1-on-1 time for specific situations like onboarding, rather than a fixed weekly cadence.

Before attending a meeting, ask two questions: 1) "What specific decision or alignment will this create?" and 2) "What happens if we don't have this meeting?" If you can't provide clear, impactful answers, the meeting is a waste of time and should be canceled or handled asynchronously.

High-performing remote teams exhibit "bursty" collaboration—short, intense periods of interaction followed by deep work. To enable this, teams should cancel recurring meetings and instead establish shared "collaboration hours" where everyone is available for ad-hoc problem-solving and spontaneous discussion.

The first step to better meetings is asking "should we have this meeting at all?" By eliminating purely informational meetings, you prevent the formation of norms like disengagement and silence. This makes it more likely that when a collaborative meeting is necessary, team members will actively participate.

Status update meetings are a major productivity drain. Replace them with asynchronous videos (e.g., Loom). This method is more efficient, allowing people to consume updates on their own time. It also conveys more signal—tone, emphasis, and personality—than a written update, fostering better connection on distributed teams.

Adopt the private equity board meeting model: circulate a detailed brief a week in advance. This forces attendees to consume updates asynchronously. The meeting itself can then be dedicated entirely to debating critical, forward-looking decisions instead of wasting time on status reports.

Instead of using meetings for context-setting, Loom’s team sends a required 'pre-watch' video walkthrough of the strategy. This forces stakeholders to arrive with full context, allowing the live meeting to be shorter and entirely focused on critique, asking clarifying questions, and making decisions.

Endless internal meetings to align stakeholders often feel productive but generate zero real value. They become forums for individuals to 'win' arguments and feel correct. True progress only happens through customer interaction, as internal opinions are worthless until validated externally.