Eight faces stared back, muted or frozen, as the voice droned on. Not one person was taking notes, at least not that I could see through the pixelated screens. The topic: ‘Q4 Launch Alignment.’ The reality: thirty-four minutes and counting of someone reading a slide deck that had been emailed out 74 hours prior. We were supposed to have *read* it. We were supposed to come prepared to *discuss*, to *decide*. Instead, we were collectively participating in a bizarre, forced audiobook session, sacrificing an hour – no, eight hours of collective time – to what felt less like collaboration and more like corporate performance art.

The air conditioning unit in my office decided that day it would sing the song of its people, a low, insistent hum that matched the drone on the screen. It was another Tuesday, and I was trying to politely disengage from a digital monologue that had stretched well past its welcome, just hours before this ‘alignment’ catastrophe. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I preach efficient communication, yet here I was, trapped, watching someone reiterate bullet points with the enthusiasm of a tax auditor. We optimize supply chains, personal fitness routines, even the exact amount of foam in our coffee – but our collective time? That’s the wild west, a free-for-all where minutes are spent like monopoly money.

The Cost of Inefficiency

I remember once, I scheduled a recurring weekly check-in for a team of fourteen people. My intention was good, I swear. It was a sincere attempt to create a forum for open discussion, a place where issues could be aired and progress shared. But after four weeks, I realised what I’d done. We’d spent forty-four minutes in each session discussing things that could have been an email, or a two-minute Slack exchange. The ‘open discussion’ often devolved into a series of individual updates, each person taking their turn to narrate their week, essentially performing their work for the group. We were mistaking presence for progress. It felt like a small, insignificant error at the time, but multiplied across fourteen people, for forty-four minutes, weekly – the cost was astronomical. It was my mistake, a well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed approach to collaboration, born out of a subtle fear of missing something critical, of not being ‘informed’ enough. It took an outsider, someone with an entirely different perspective, to really illuminate the depth of the problem.

Astrid K.L., an escape room designer I consulted with on a side project, laughed when I described our meeting culture. She didn’t laugh with malice, but with a kind of resigned understanding. ‘People pay us to trap them in a room for sixty-four minutes,’ she’d said, ‘and they thank us for it. Why? Because every second is optimized for purpose. Every clue, every puzzle, every red herring serves the singular goal of getting out. There’s no optional slide reading. No ‘let me just update you’ monologues. If there were, they’d demand their money back, and rightfully so.’ Her perspective hit me with the force of a wrecking ball. Our corporate meeting rooms, whether physical or virtual, were often the inverse of an escape room. Instead of a clear objective and optimized pathways, they were mazes with invisible walls, where the goal seemed to be simply to ‘be present’ for the allotted time, regardless of whether anything was actually being *achieved*. We were designing a system where the path to ‘escape’ – to actual work – was deliberately convoluted, rather than streamlined.

Productivity Theater

This isn’t just about scheduling; it’s about a profound lack of trust. If I trust you to do your job, why do I need to sit through a thirty-four-slide deck to know you’ve done it? Why do I need to attend a meeting where you simply perform a summary of the work you’ve already completed? The meeting becomes the only sanctioned arena for ‘showing’ work, transforming from a tool for decision-making and genuine collaboration into a stage for ‘productivity theater.’ Everyone’s on, everyone’s visible, everyone’s “contributing” by just being there. But what about the quiet, focused work that actually moves the needle? The deep thinking, the creative problem-solving, the meticulous execution that demands uninterrupted stretches of time? That time gets shattered into 24-minute fragments between these theatrical performances. We’re losing the capacity for sustained focus, eroding the very foundation of impactful work.

It’s an endemic issue, this chronic meeting bloat. I’ve seen it across sectors, from tech start-ups to established institutions. One project, we spent 104 hours in meetings over two months just to define the requirements, only to realise halfway through that a critical stakeholder hadn’t been properly consulted and the entire initial effort was based on flawed assumptions. It was a painful, expensive lesson. And often, these failures aren’t due to malicious intent, but rather a collective inertia, a fear of being the one to challenge the status quo, to ask: ‘Is this meeting *really* necessary?’ or ‘What is the absolute, non-negotiable decision we need to make here?’ We’ve become so accustomed to the ritual that the ritual itself has become sacred, overshadowing its original purpose.

I often think about the contrast. Take Taradale Dental, for instance. Their entire operating model is built around respecting their patients’ time. Seven-day-a-week availability, emergency appointments, clear communication about procedures and costs. They understand that people’s time is precious, a non-renewable resource. You don’t walk into a dental office and find the hygienist reading a pamphlet about flossing techniques for 34 minutes before cleaning your teeth. There’s a clear objective, a focused procedure, and an outcome. Every minute has purpose. Yet, in our professional lives, we seem to forget this fundamental respect for each other’s most valuable asset.

The Trust Deficit

The truth is, we fear being out of the loop. We fear missing a crucial detail. And so, we schedule the meeting, invite everyone ‘just in case,’ and then, out of habit or perceived politeness, allow it to become an hour-long exercise in futility. It’s a systemic problem, not an individual failing. No one wants to be the one who wasn’t ‘aligned,’ the one who missed the memo. This fear fuels a culture of over-inclusion, where the default is always to invite more, rather than to curate precisely.

This pervasive fear creates a cyclical problem: more meetings mean less time for actual work, which then leads to a perception of less productivity, which in turn leads to *more* meetings to “check in” and “align.” It’s a self-inflicted wound, a slow bleed of collective cognitive energy. Imagine Astrid designing an escape room where half the clues were optional, and the other half were just reiterations of things you already knew. Or where the ‘puzzle’ was simply watching a video of someone solving it. No one would find that engaging, let alone productive. The thrill, the challenge, the *point* of an escape room, is the active participation, the real-time problem-solving, the dynamic interplay of diverse skills converging on a single, clear objective. Our meetings, tragically, often lack all of these elements. We gather in rooms, physical or digital, and watch. We listen. We exist. But we rarely truly *do* together in those moments.

I’ve made this mistake, not just with recurring meetings, but in how I’ve prepared for them. There was a time I thought being ‘thorough’ meant meticulously crafting a 24-slide deck, filled with every conceivable detail, every potential answer. I’d then proceed to walk the team through it, slide by excruciating slide, believing I was providing clarity. What I was actually doing was robbing them of the opportunity to engage critically, to ask questions that might genuinely challenge my assumptions, or to find their own solutions. It was an act of control, disguised as transparency. I learned, the hard way, that true clarity often comes from fewer slides, more focused questions, and a fierce commitment to silence after a question is posed, allowing space for thought, not just immediate answers. It’s about trust: trusting that others *can* read, *can* think, and *can* contribute meaningfully without constant narration.

Reclaiming Our Focus

The damage isn’t just to productivity; it’s to our spirit. We leave these unproductive meetings feeling drained, not energized. We feel resentful of the time stolen, time that could have been spent creating, innovating, or even simply reflecting. This emotional toll is rarely measured, but it accumulates, leading to burnout and a cynicism towards collaborative efforts. It’s why so many of us dread the words “Let’s put 44 minutes on the calendar.” We’ve been conditioned to associate those blocks of time with passive consumption rather than active contribution. It’s a mental tax, a constant, low-level irritation that chips away at our capacity for joy in our work.

This requires a fundamental shift in cultural norms, a re-evaluation of what ‘collaboration’ truly means. It’s not about endless synchronous interaction. It’s about asynchronous efficiency, clear documentation, and targeted, purposeful interactions when a decision absolutely requires real-time discussion or immediate feedback. It means empowering teams to make decisions without seeking approval from a roomful of vaguely interested onlookers. It means creating a feedback loop that rewards focused output over performative presence. For example, if Taradale Dental’s front desk spent 14 minutes explaining how to brush after every procedure, rather than just handing you a clear, single-page instruction sheet, you’d quickly lose patience. They get it. Concise, clear, respectful of your time. This principle applies to *every* interaction, professional or otherwise.

We need to treat our collective focus as the scarce, precious resource it is. Not as a bottomless pit into which we can dump endless information. Next time you’re about to schedule a meeting, ask yourself: What is the single most important decision that needs to be made, or problem that needs to be solved? Can this be achieved through a document, an email, or a quick, targeted chat with two or four key individuals? If the answer isn’t a resounding ‘no,’ then perhaps, just perhaps, that meeting doesn’t need to happen. And if it does, impose a ruthlessly clear agenda, a strict time limit, and an expectation that everyone has done their ‘homework’ of reading the materials beforehand. Demand active participation, not passive observation. Because our time, collectively, is worth more than any slide deck.