This Thought Experiment Could Save You 32 Hours A Month
Photo by MART PRODUCTION
TL/DR
Recurring meetings tend to accumulate without review
Zero-based calendaring starts with a blank slate
Question purpose, length, frequency, and format
Reclaim time without losing productivity
The Whole Shebang
You have more meetings than you need on your calendar.
You’re attending meetings that have long outworn their usefulness.
You’re attending meetings that are too long.
That could have been an email.
That you were invited to without knowing why.
Meetings where you’re multitasking, waiting for the off-chance your name will be called and you’ll need to answer a question about it.
Am I right?
If you work in a professional job, I’m fairly certain the above is true for you.
Because it’s true for all but the smallest number of my clients. (At least before we start working together.)
In fact, many years ago, my very first coaching client had 40 hours of recurring meetings in his calendar each week.
That’s a full workweek of meetings!
No wonder he was so stressed and couldn’t get his job done during the workday, working late into the evenings and on weekends.
Now look, I’ve talked about calendar audits before and I still think they work great.
In fact, it’s how we cut that client of mine’s meeting load in half, while increasing his performance.
But today, let’s talk about a more drastic method, a gutsier method, a brave method of rightsizing your meetings.
A method that’s likely to cut down on all those meetings even more, without losing one iota of productivity or letting things get lost in translation.
What am i talking about?
Zero-based calendaring!
What the heck is zero-based calendaring?
It’s like zero-based budgeting, but for your calendar.
In zero-based budgeting, instead of basing this year’s budget on last year’s and making tweaks where needed, you start fresh.
Blank sheet, fresh eyes.
What if you did that with your calendar?
Now, I’m not saying go cancel every meeting on your calendar willy-nilly without consulting anyone. (That’s not a good look, and as tempting as it is, you know its not a good idea.)
So, let’s instead think of this as a thought experiment.
First, imagine that you work calendar is blank.
No meetings.
Fresh as your first day.
Now think to yourself:
What meetings do I need, in order to move my work forward, or that of my team?
Then think:
How long should these meetings be?
Who should be in them?
How frequent should they be?
Don’t let your existing meetings guide you.
Then, compare what you came up with to what’s on your calendar right now. And ask yourself:
Are there meetings you want to cancel (or excuse yourself from altogether)?
Are there meetings you can delegate?
Are there meetings that could be an email?
Are there meetings where you can suggest a change in format, function, length and/or frequency?
Now, it’s time to start with some low hanging fruit and start making (or socializing) experiments.
(Pro tip: using language of experimentation is often more effective than using language of change. Almost everyone's willing to experiment; almost no one wants to change.)
Wanna take this to a whole nother level?
If you’re in HR, or you’re a manager, or you’re a founder or exec, you might be well positioned to try out a strategy that at least 2 brave companies (Dropbox and Asana, according to Adam Grant’s Work/Life podcast) tried (with amazing success, I might add).
It’s called “meeting apocalypse” (or “meeting doomsday” or “ar-meeting-ageddon”).
And this company , here’s what these badasses did:
Overnight, they cancelled every single internal meeting across the whole company.
Literally every single one.
And employees showed up to empty calendars one morning (along with an email explaining what was going on), aside from external meetings.
And, here’s the kicker, they were told that they couldn’t add any additional recurring meetings for 2 whole weeks.
Why? Because if they let people add back the meetings right away, they were afraid that folks would just add, from memory, all the meetings that had been removed.
And, they wanted to give folks a few weeks without those recurring meetings to do the thought experiment I outlined above (or a version of it, I’m assuming), to figure out what meetings they really needed, without being tied to the past.
And what happened, I bet you’re wondering?
After a few months, people were saving between 11 and 32 hours A MONTH in meeting time.
Shocked? Here’s why you shouldn’t be.
Your calendars is additive. Once a recurring meeting is added, it almost never goes away. You feel it’s rude to bring it up.
And yet, imagine what you could do with 70% fewer meetings.
I bet you’d get your whole job done, during the workday, almost every single day.
So, how about it? Are you up for a little zero-based calendaring experiment?
If you try it, please report back and tell me what happened!
And if you need a little help, here are 3 ways we can work together:
Enroll in the Time Well Spent course
Bite-sized, shame-free steps to take control of your time, and your life. Built for real people with big lives, big jobs, or both. Learn more, or enroll here.
Get 1:1 Coaching
High-touch coaching for people managers, leaders, executives and founders who need a trusted partner to streamline priorities, manage the overwhelm, and focus on what moves the needle most. Schedule a call to explore if this is the right fit for you.
Explore Team Workshops/Training
Customized workshops and trainings to help your team improve productivity without burnout and create a culture where people (actually) thrive.“Making Meetings Better” was one of my most popular workshops of 2025! Schedule a call to explore if this is the right fit for you.
