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Find yourself sitting in a meeting, wondering why you're even invited?

Meetings can sometimes turn out to be a waste of time. No clear agenda. Not the right attendees. No preparation before hand. Such unproductive meetings can lead to frustration and feeling less engaged at work.

CAPACITY & LIMITSBOUNDARIES

Wendy Boey

2/5/20265 min read

We've all been there. Not all meetings are equal. Sometimes we find ourselves tracking vanity metrics over the actual health of the business, or giving no critical updates so we appear to stakeholders that we're working on something.

We act like we’re always short on time, yet we are careless with the minutes we have. Most of us don’t need better time management; we need better discernment on how we are spending our time. But it's tough in organizations when you're new to the team or in a junior position, trying to figure out what are the social norms, when it's "okay" to say no to certain requests.

Sure, it's nice to see each other in person or over a zoom call once in a while, especially when working remote. But if your calendar is full and nothing is actually getting done, it's time to voice out and protect your time for priority work.

In this essay, I'll provide a few questions that you can use as a "sanity filter", as well as scripts on what to say in different scenarios.

Sanity Filter

Before you hit "accept" on your next meeting, I suggest that you run it through this filter:

Is there an agenda? What specific decision(s) need to be made?
What is my unique contribution? Would the outcome change if I weren't there?
Are we making decisions, or just "visioning" for the fifth time?

Scenario 1: The meeting keeps being rescheduled, and the work hasn't fallen apart.

What I recommend:

Push for an asynchronous update instead. Contributors can enter concise updates into a shared document, and tag any action items. Participants can read the updates at their convenience, without reshuffling their schedule for a timeslot that works for everyone. Decisions will be well-documented, and not lost in verbal updates.

An asynchronous update works in this situation, because it's all about respecting each other's time and priorities. Each of us have different roles and responsibilities. While this project might be your biggest deliverable for the quarter, it may not be so for another function. Putting myself in the scenario, I would rather reserve my peak energy to move forward work that is most crucial for my team, than to spend 30 minutes in an unnecessary meeting with non-critical updates.

And say, at the close of your work day, you've made the most detailed to-do list to tackle the top 3 priorities the next morning. But things happen. For me, that could be catching a cold overnight, and I can't make the best decision in that mental fogginess. That's part and parcel of life, the human experience.

As for those of you who work across multiple time zones, I feel you. It's especially difficult to find an appropriate timing without encroaching on your colleague's lunch hours, early mornings or late nights. Trust me, I have had technical trainings at 6am and late night global calls at 1am. While I may be physically present for those meetings, my mind is nowhere functional at those hours.

And perhaps most importantly, you might be surprised to know that it takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption. If work doesn't fall apart without that consistently rescheduled/postponed meeting, you're better off saving your energy for deep focus work than scrambling to check for another time slot available on everyone's calendar.

Use this script:

"Since our schedules are shifting, let's move this to an email or a shared doc update so we don't stall progress waiting for a slot to open up."

Scenario 2: You're invited to the meeting to "stay in the loop", like being cc: on an email thread that doesn't need your action.

What I recommend:

Ask for the meeting notes or meeting recording, instead of attending the session live. Use AI tools to help you summarize key discussion points, as well as highlight any action items you have to follow up on (which is unlikely given you're there to "stay in the loop" in the first place). The meeting recording allows you to pause and rewind, or skim to the parts relevant to you. This ensures you actually retain the information you need.

I trust that you've experienced being added to long email chains because people assume that you should stay in the loop of things. Bosses get bcc: in all sorts of emails so they're kept aware what's happening on the ground.

Now, you're invited to spend 30-60 minutes to stay informed. There is no direct contribution required from you. And most times, such meetings do not even require your full attention for the entire duration. I've sat in 2 hours meetings where I later realized only a 5-minute update was relevant to me from the entire session.

Now, if there are 8 other colleagues invited to the same big meeting just to stay informed, we're seriously looking at an entire lost day of productivity (8 people x 1 hour each). Imagine the amount of things you can do in that time!

Likewise, any asynchronous update works in this scenario too. (Refer back to Scenario 1).

Use this script:

"I’m currently focused on (Priority Project), so I’ll skip this one to stay on track. Could you please share the meeting notes or recording afterward so I can stay informed?"

Scenario 3: You're unsure why you're invited to attend that meeting.

What I recommend:

Look through the meeting agenda and clarify your role before committing to attend the meeting. Are you there because you're deemed a subject matter expert and you can offer good advice to move the project forward? Are you there because all the decision makers (including yourself) will be in the same room and a swift decision is required?

By clarifying your role, you're forcing the person who invited you to justify your time and presence. Every hour you spend in a meeting is an opportunity cost. Unless you're involved in solving a high-value problem in that meeting, you're trading off precious time from doing actual work.

Meetings that end with "Let's check with leadership and circle back" are just meetings to schedule more meetings. By knowing what is required of you and the decision makers are in the room, you guarantee that the meeting will actually result in an outcome.

And who knows? Maybe you were assumed to be the best person on your team to give insights for this meeting, but another coworker is actually the one who has been working quietly on the project all this while.

And please, if there's a cross-function meeting where attendance is assumed mandatory, only 1 representative from your team needs to attend the meeting. It's more efficient to have 1 person in attendance responsible to gather and distribute all the action items for the entire team.

Use this script:

"To make sure I’m prepared and providing value, what specific input or decision are you looking for from me in this session?"

Scenario 4: There is no decision required in this meeting.

What I recommend:

Don't be afraid to ask about for the purpose of setting up that meeting, or even suggest a more efficient format like an asynchronous update (see Scenario 1). Voicing out works in this situation because we often do the things we do just because it's "always been done this way". When no one is challenging an unproductive series of meeting, that recurring invite remains on your calendar for months (or even years!).

And when you already know there's no decision required in the meeting, be honest - would you be paying 100% attention, or are you more likely to be multitasking on your laptop? When you half-listen, you're likely to miss out key information (if there's any in the first place), which would lead to more questions later.. and the meeting gets dragged longer... or worse, another meeting gets set up to address these new questions you have...

Use this script:

"Since this is primarily an information share rather than a decision-making session, would it be more efficient to handle this via a status update or a quick video?"

Final note

Remember, information sharing is a one-way street. Meetings should be for constructive debates, negotiations, and seeking alignment. Time is a non-renewable resource; so if you come out of a meeting feeling like nothing gets done, you've just essentially wasted time.

If you found the above helpful, do bookmark this page, and share this with your network

Find yourself sitting in a meeting, wondering why you're even invited?

Sanity Filter

Scenario 1: The meeting keeps being rescheduled, and the work hasn't fallen apart.

What I recommend:

Use this script:

Scenario 2: You're invited to the meeting to "stay in the loop", like being cc: on an email thread that doesn't need your action.

What I recommend:

Use this script:

Scenario 3: You're unsure why you're invited to attend that meeting.

What I recommend:

Use this script:

Scenario 4: There is no decision required in this meeting.

What I recommend:

Use this script:

Final note

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