This is complete garbage, but it explains why calendars keep getting more crowded despite overwhelming evidence that meeting overload destroys productivity. I watched a facilities manager in Adelaide schedule weekly "operational alignment meetings" that served no purpose except proving to his boss that he was actively managing his team. The team already communicated effectively through daily handovers and had no operational alignment issues. Six months later, three of his best technicians had transferred to other departments citing "too many unnecessary meetings" as their primary complaint. The Decision Avoidance Strategy Here's something nobody talks about: many meetings exist because managers are afraid to make decisions independently. Instead of taking responsibility for choices within their authority, they schedule "consultation sessions" and "stakeholder input meetings" to spread accountability around. This creates decision paralysis disguised as collaborative leadership. A construction company in Cairns was losing contracts because their project approval process required five separate meetings over three weeks. Competitors were winning jobs by making decisions in days while this company was still scheduling discussion sessions. The irony is that most meeting participants would prefer someone just make the bloody decision rather than enduring endless consultation about obvious choices. What Meetings Actually Accomplish After sitting through approximately 2,847 workplace meetings over my career (yes, I kept count for a while), I can categorise them into three types: Information sharing meetings that could have been emails. These are usually status updates where people report on work everyone already knows they're doing. Decision-making meetings where no decisions get made because nobody wants to take responsibility for choices that might have consequences. Alignment meetings that exist solely to make managers feel like they're managing something, regardless of whether alignment was actually needed. The fourth type—genuine problem-solving sessions where groups tackle complex challenges together—represents maybe 15% of the meetings I've observed. The Productivity Mathematics Every hour spent in meetings is an hour not spent on deliverable work. But the real cost is higher because meetings fragment the day, making deep work impossible. If you have three 30-minute meetings scattered throughout your day, you haven't lost 90 minutes—you've lost your ability to concentrate on complex tasks for the entire day. Knowledge work requires uninterrupted blocks of time. Meetings destroy this by creating artificial urgency around communication that could happen asynchronously. A software development team in Melbourne tracked their productivity before and after implementing "meeting-free mornings." Code quality improved by 28% and project delivery accelerated by 40% simply by protecting four hours of focused work time. The Virtual Meeting Multiplication Remote work was supposed to reduce meeting overhead by eliminating travel time and making quick conversations easier. Instead, it's multiplied meeting frequency because digital interaction feels "free." People schedule video calls for discussions that would have been brief hallway conversations. They create recurring check-ins because they're paranoid about losing visibility with remote teams. The result is meeting fatigue that's worse than anything we experienced in traditional offices. I worked with a government agency in Darwin where team leaders were holding daily video check-ins, weekly one-on-ones, fortnightly planning sessions, and monthly strategic reviews. People were spending 45% of their time talking about work instead of doing it. https://speakerdeck.com/rudolph