Scheduled, recurring meetings can lead to teams inventing topics to discuss simply because the time is blocked. This creates busywork that isn't impactful. It's better to meet when necessary rather than defaulting to a fixed cadence without a clear, persistent need.

The true productivity goal isn't inbox zero, but calendar zero. Yext founder Howard Lerman found that having an Executive Assistant paradoxically led to a full calendar. By removing the role and scheduling meetings himself, he created a higher bar and reclaimed his time for deep work.

Before scheduling, ensure a meeting's purpose is to Decide, Debate, Discuss, or Develop (4Ds). Then, confirm the topic is either Complex, Emotionally intense, or a One-way door decision (CEO). This rigorous filter eliminates status updates and other low-value synchronous gatherings from calendars.

If a recurring meeting serves multiple purposes (e.g., status, strategy, and tactical), it's a "Frankenstein" meeting that should be eliminated. Audit your meetings, assign a single label (Tactical, Strategic, or Operational) to each, and split any meeting that has multiple labels into separate, focused sessions.

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.

Burnout often stems from accumulating commitments that are no longer aligned with your goals. Actively create a "to-don't" list by auditing your calendar for tasks and meetings that don't serve your current vision, and then systematically eliminate them.

Friday afternoons are often low-productivity. Use this window for a high-leverage task: triaging your calendar for the upcoming week. Proactively cancel unnecessary meetings, shorten others, and delegate tasks to free up prime time before the week even begins.

Instead of incrementally auditing meetings, a "meeting doomsday" involves deleting all recurring meetings for 48 hours. This forces teams to consciously rebuild their calendars from scratch, questioning the necessity, cadence, and attendees for every meeting, which is more effective than defending existing ones.