Are you meeting your life away?

Work in an office? Then you’ll know what it’s like to be perpetually stuck in meetings: squabbling over who booked which room, waiting for Karen from IT to set up the Powerpoint, checking your phone surreptitiously under the table while a colleague shares an irrelevant anecdote. Now, a new study has revealed we spend 213 hours a year (that’s a full 26 working days) in meetings. Nearly a million of us spend more than half our working week in them. Most of us attend a minimum of one a day, with an unlucky 10% spending between nine and 14 hours a week in meetings. Our propensity to book one for everything is out of control; I once actually went to a meeting about meetings.

Obviously, collaboration in a workplace is essential, but too many meetings are a profound nuisance and, often, they get in the way of us being able to do our actual job. It’s no wonder many of us stay late, work through lunch and answer emails before bed; our time between 9 and 5 is being commandeered. It’s excessive, not to mention damaging to productivity and morale. It impedes our capacity to do our jobs well, and distracts us from the stuff we should really be doing. (Very few job descriptions include ‘attending meetings’ as a top priority.) Besides, meetings are rarely efficiently run. According to the survey, on average we waste the first 20 minutes of every 60-minute meeting waiting for people to turn up or sorting out technical difficulties. One in 10 people surveyed by design company MOO said they spend a third of their meetings checking their phone. A quarter confessed that they’ve fallen asleep at least once.

So long as living human beings are literally snoozing at the boardroom table, we have a problem. It’s making us overwhelmed and unfocused, not to mention tetchy and bored, which is not exactly conducive to excellence. Truly, ask any freelancer (like me) how much time they save not having to go to all the meetings required of staff and they’ll tell you about the Pilates class/daytime movie/ cheeky nap they sneak in instead.

Careers coach Hannah Salton says this is all the proof we need to be more discerning about which invitations to accept. ‘Review them with a critical eye, based on your priorities,’ she says. ‘Don’t be afraid to have a conversation with your manager or the meeting organiser to work out if you really need to be there.’ If you’re in charge of scheduling meetings, do a little inventory of their efficiency. Could they be monthly instead of weekly? Thirty minutes instead of 60? Could you do it standing or walking, to boost your focus? Every meeting needs a clear purpose, too – and for people to stick to it. ‘Circulate an agenda in advance. Be clear on the objectives to set focus and direction. If you are facilitating, ask attendees what they want to get from it to ensure it’s useful and focused for them.’

Together, we can reclaim our calendar space. It all starts with a bit of critical thinking before we hit that ‘attending’ button. And before you even think about it, no, we do not need a meeting to discuss this.