February 25, 2026
Hi Everyone,
Count the meetings on your calendar next week that have more than seven people, no stated outcome, or no agenda. That number is roughly how many hours you're losing to meetings that won't move anything forward.
That's not an exaggeration – a McKinsey survey found that 61% of executives consider at least half their decision-making time ineffective, and meetings are where most of that time goes.
The good news is that you don't need a company-wide initiative to fix this.
Three rules, applied to your own meetings, can shave hours off your week while making the meetings that remain both faster and sharper.
1. Cap decision meetings at seven people
Bain & Company found what they call the Rule of 7: every person added to a decision-making group over seven reduces decision effectiveness by about 10%.
Follow that math, and a group of 17 almost never reaches a decision.
Before you send the invite, ask who actually needs to decide and who just needs to know the outcome. The second group gets a written summary after the meeting, not a calendar invite to attend.
If you're worried about leaving people out, try a two-tier invite. Core participants make the decision. Optional participants review the notes and can raise objections within 24 hours.
2. Every invite states what's being decided
If a meeting invite doesn’t state what decision you’re making, it probably shouldn't be sent.
Jeff Weiner, when he was CEO of LinkedIn, eliminated presentations from meetings entirely.
Materials went out 24 hours in advance so people could come ready to discuss and decide rather than sit and listen.
A simple version of this is to add two lines to every invite:
"We are deciding on X," and "We need to leave with Y."
If you can't fill in those blanks, you’re not ready to schedule the meeting yet.
3. Default to 25 and 50 minutes
Calendar software defaults to 30 and 60-minute slots, so that's what we book. But those last five or ten minutes rarely produce anything, and they kill the buffer your brain needs between meetings.
Both Outlook and Google Calendar let you default all meetings to end 5 or 10 minutes early.
You can turn it on in your settings right now, and every meeting you schedule from now on will have a built-in buffer.
Start with one meeting
You don't need to overhaul your entire calendar.
Pick one meeting that has too many people and trim the list. Pick one that has no stated decision and either add one or cancel it. Change your default to 25/50 minutes.
When Shopify cancelled all recurring meetings with three or more people in 2023, they removed 12,000 events from employee calendars. After a two-week reset, teams only added back the ones that genuinely mattered.
You don't need to go that far, but starting with one meeting is enough to see the difference.
Go deeper
👉 Microsoft Work Lab: Research Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks – the brain-wave study that showed stress climbs steadily in back-to-back meetings but resets completely with even 10-minute breaks.
👉 MIT Sloan Management Review: The Surprising Impact of Meeting-Free Days – a study of 76 companies found that cutting meetings by 40% led to 71% higher productivity.
👉 McKinsey: How to run effective meetings – 61% of executives say at least half their decision-making time is ineffective. This walks through how to fix the structure.
Coming up tomorrow
Tomorrow we're sharing a simple exercise that helps you figure out which tasks on your plate actually need you – and what to hand off.
That's it for today!
P.S. What would you do with five extra hours next week? That's roughly what these changes free up. Let us know what's on your list.