A 2-minute audit that could give you back a morning a week

To begin, write down the five standing meetings that swallow the largest share of your working week. Chances are one of them has been pointless for months. In Deloitte's 2025 study, which polled 7,500 women in 15 nations, 36% reported that their stress has climbed compared with twelve months earlier. You can't rework your industry by Friday, but you can rework your calendar in two minutes, and the meetings you keep attending out of habit are the simplest place to begin.

A pointless meeting isn't a personal failing. Someone set up that invite for a reason that has since faded, and calendars don't clear out old commitments on their own. Somebody needs to examine this. Run each of your five through the ten statements below and tally the yes answers for each.

The tally

Q1. Last time this meeting ran, could you point to a single decision it produced?

Q2. The update it gives could fit in a two-paragraph email, and sometimes it already does.

Q3. Though more than eight people are in the room, barely three of them ever open their mouths.

Q4. Regardless of what the agenda holds, it stretches right up to the bell at the end of its block.

Q5. Many people quietly slip into other tasks while it drags on, and no one appears to object.

Q6. No one owns the agenda; it's the same invite from two years ago, still sending itself out.

Q7. Were it scrapped this week, you can bet nobody would bother asking for an explanation.

Q8. Your reason for attending has less to do with contributions you can make and more to do with fear of decisions made in your absence.

Q9. What actually gets settled tends to surface afterward, in a far more intimate exchange.

Question ten. It sits right in the middle of your sharpest working hours.

Zero to three yes marks: the meeting is pulling its weight

Here, something of genuine substance is taking place. It may still run long, though. Request the agenda a full day beforehand, then suggest shortening the session to half an hour. Meetings grow to fill the time booked for them, and nobody has ever objected to getting fifteen minutes back.

Four to six: time for a light cut

The meeting has a purpose, but it carries a lot of padding. Send the owner one line: "Could we try this every other week and see what breaks?" Most owners agree, since they're likely as worn out by it as you are. If nothing falls apart after a month, you have your answer, and so do they.

Seven to ten: effectively defunct, yet still booked

Nobody is going to strike this off the schedule on your behalf. Should you be the organizer, drop the gathering and dispatch a brief two-paragraph message in its place. Should you not be, turn down the next three invitations by replying, "I'll catch up on the notes. Bring me in if a decision calls for my input." Then observe the outcome. In most cases, nothing does, and nothing is the best result a calendar can give you.

Why the morning block exists

Cutting the number of meetings for its own sake is not the point. It's moving your hours to where decisions actually get made and out of rooms where nothing gets decided. Reclaiming a single morning each week adds up to a substantial chunk of time. It could go to a strategy document, an honest look at your own role in the market, or coffee with the one person who could change your next job. None of those will ever show up on your calendar as an invite.

Let us know which of your five you canceled and whether anyone took notice.