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How to Defend Yourself Against the Meeting-Industrial Complex

Why your work calendar is more packed than ever and tips on maximizing productivity in and around those meeting blocks.

Amy Maoz

Read when you’ve got time to spare.

You might be reading this while you’re in a meeting—or maybe you’re enjoying your few precious pre- or post-meeting minutes, minutes you know you should be using to bang out the action items from yesterday’s meetings. Such is life amid the meeting-industrial complex, a topic Derek Thompson covers in The Atlantic this week.

Thompson, along with the authors of the stories below, feels your pain. Luckily, they have more than a few ideas on how to make the most of your working hours through speedier meetings, attacking your own deep work when your day is stacked, and politely declining the meetings that really could be emails. So tell your colleagues you’re out of pocket and will have to circle back on the deliverables—for now you’re drilling down on some mission-critical, game-changing learnings. (Related: Please Stop Using These Phrases in Meetings.)

Image by John Lund / Getty Image

White-Collar Work Is Just Meetings Now

The meeting-industrial complex has grown to the point that communications has eclipsed creativity as the central skill of modern work.

How to Get Your to-Do List Done When You’re Always in Meetings

You may never get your perfect time or ideal day, so start working within the reality that meetings happen — and that you can get important stuff done in between them.

How to Make Meetings Shorter (for Real)

Time is money. Reclaim your precious minutes with these strategies for in-person and virtual meetings.

5 Ways to Cut the Time You Spend in Meetings in Half

While it sounds impossible, or too good to be true, Kenzo Fong’s company Rock implemented this policy from its start. He says he’s only had success since.

This Is What Happens to Your Brain When You’re in Back-to-Back Meetings

You can actually see stress levels spike in people’s brainwaves when their work schedules are packed.

4 Distractions That Derail Meetings — and How to Handle Them

Understanding a few common dysfunctional behaviors can help managers turn meetings to instruments for team success.

Don’t Schedule Meetings After 4 Pm

People are redefining the 9-to-5 and that’s a good thing.

Death by a Thousand Meetings: How to Reduce Video-Call Overload

White-collar workers are still suffering from back-to-back video calls. Experts provide tips on how to rethink meetings.

How to Answer the Age-Old Question: Could This Meeting Have Been an Email?

We’ve all attended meetings that could have been skipped entirely. Before you schedule another one, do us all a favor and consider these four factors.

10 Tips for Politely Declining Useless Meetings

Here are some tactics to start emptying your calendar.