Meetings are toxic. Here is why:
- Meetings are full of abstract jargon and vague concepts instead of addressing concrete matters.
- Discussions constantly drift off-topic.
- They demand thorough preparation that most participants never have time to complete.
- Overstuffed agendas leave everyone unclear about actual objectives.
- Every meeting has at least one person who loves the sound of their own voice — meaningless statements that waste everyone’s time.
- Meetings breed more meetings. One leads to another in endless succession.
- They follow predictable scheduling patterns, like TV programming — recurring whether useful or not.
The real work gets done outside of meetings, by individuals with uninterrupted time to think and act.
— From the book Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson