The Meeting Trap

How managerial insecurity creates pointless work

Meeting Fatigue Is a Management Failure

For about eighteen months, my calendar was full. Not strategically full, just full. I accepted meetings because there were empty slots. I rarely questioned whether a meeting was necessary, or whether I needed to be there. Most days ended with hours of calls and nothing to show for them.

I was not a victim of this system. I was part of it. I called meetings that did not need to happen. I scheduled syncs because I was unsure whether someone was on track and did not want to ask directly. I used meetings to defer decisions I could have made alone. Meetings felt like progress. They were not, but they provided cover. The calendar filled because filling it was easier than doing the work that would have made the meetings unnecessary.

Why Meetings Multiply

Meetings proliferate not because they are effective, but because they are safe. Scheduling a meeting signals activity. It distributes accountability. It creates a record of alignment. For managers under pressure, calling a meeting is easier than making a decision, writing a document, or trusting someone to do their job.

Many meetings serve political or emotional functions rather than operational ones. They exist to demonstrate oversight, to cover risk, or to perform momentum where none exists. A recurring sync is often not coordination. It is organisational theatre.

A Taxonomy of Useless Meetings

I have been responsible for most of these.

Status updates. Called by someone senior who wants visibility into progress. They serve accountability, not coordination. Their frequency correlates with a trust deficit between layers of the organisation.

Read-alouds. A host reads through a slide deck or document while attendees sit in silence. The meeting exists because writing is harder than talking, and because sending a document does not guarantee it will be read.

Undefined outcomes. Labelled as brainstorming or syncs. They end without action items. If the only output is another meeting, the first one had no purpose.

Zombie recurrences. These start with a reason but persist through inertia. No one cancels them because cancellation requires a decision, and decisions require ownership.

Agenda drift. These begin with a structure but expand. Without time limits or a facilitator willing to cut discussion, any topic fills the available time.

Most people running these meetings are themselves overloaded and operating in systems that reward presence over output. That does not make the meetings useful. It explains why they continue.

What Actually Helped

I made changes. They left the underlying problem untouched.

Buffers. I started ending meetings five minutes early and beginning them five minutes late.

Focus blocks. Both Google Calendar and Outlook allow you to reserve time for uninterrupted work. I did this. The blocks held about 70% of the time.

Scheduling tools. Calendly, and later Google Workspace’s equivalent, let others book time within defined windows. I controlled when I was interruptible.

Agendas as filters. I declined meetings without a stated purpose. A list of topics lets attendees assess whether they need to be there. It also forces organisers to clarify their own thinking, which sometimes results in the meeting being cancelled.

Recorded actions. A meeting without documented outcomes is a conversation that will be forgotten. AI transcription tools help, but they do not replace someone taking ownership of follow-through.

These are mitigations. They protect individuals. They do not change the incentives.

The Problem Remains Structural

The incentives that generate meeting overload are still in place: unclear ownership, lack of trust, risk-averse cultures, weak documentation practices. Meetings remain the path of least resistance for coordination, even when they are inefficient.

The assumption that more meetings produce more alignment is rarely examined. Excessive meetings often indicate the opposite: that responsibilities are unclear, that decisions are not being made, and that written communication has failed.

This is not unchangeable. But change requires someone with authority to redesign the incentives. Those people are usually the ones whose calendars are fullest. They have the least time to notice the problem and the most investment in the current system. Meeting overload persists, in part, because it benefits those who create it.

I have fewer bad meetings now. The calendar is quieter, not because the organisation changed, but because I learned to defend my time. That is a workaround. The system remains intact.