# Meetings Are Broken. It's Time for a Meeting Doomsday. > Learn how to rescue your team from calendar chaos with a Meeting Doomsday—an experiment designed to make your meetings more productive and regain wasted time. Source: https://asana.com/resources/meetings-broken-doomsday ## Meetings are broken. It's time for a meeting doomsday. _This article was originally published on_[Inc](https://www.inc.com/rebecca-hinds/meetings-are-broken-its-time-for-a-meeting-doomsday.html)_._ [Meetings](https://www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/asana-anatomy-of-work-index-meetings-remote-work-efficiency.html) are one of the biggest time sinks in organizations today. They consistently sabotage employees' [productivity](https://www.inc.com/rebecca-hinds/how-to-inspire-productive-collaboration-avoid-burnout.html)—especially in our new era of hybrid work. Why? They've become the panacea for many other activities—coffee chats, brainstorming, happy hours, and more. Research by Harvard Business School professors found that as the pandemic unfolded, employees added [13 percent](https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/you-re-right-you-are-working-longer-and-attending-more-meetings) more meetings to their calendars.  As a leader, the shift to remote and hybrid work gives you an opportunity to hit the reset button on unproductive meetings. Yet meetings are an intrinsic part of your organization's culture. So, if you want to change the status quo, you need to think outside the box and shift mindsets—not just behaviors. Take a look at your calendar. If you or your employees are scheduling the vast majority of your meetings weekly, and for 30 minutes, something is wrong. Each meeting has a different purpose, so if most of your meetings are the same length, you haven't thought enough about how your meetings ought to be designed to maximize productivity. At my workplace, Asana, we [recently conducted an experiment to help employees boost meeting productivity](/resources/fixing-meetings-playbook).  I worked with one of our internal teams to cleanse employees' calendars of meetings that had become less productive over time. The experiment was inspired by an [activity](https://www.inc.com/rebecca-hinds-and-bob-sutton/dropbox-secret-for-saving-time-in-meetings.html) that Bob Sutton and I studied a few years ago—but updated for our hybrid work era. I call it meeting doomsday. And it's an experiment that you, too, can perform to make your meetings more productive and regain wasted time.  Here's what a meeting doomsday looks like:  ## 1. Conduct a meeting audit Many employees don't know how much time they squander in meetings. They often happen at different cadences—like every week or every six weeks—which can distort employees' perceptions of how much time they actually spend in meetings.  The first step of doomsday involves conducting a meeting audit. Each employee evaluates their recurring meetings and identifies which ones lack value. For us, we discovered most of these meetings were once productive but had grown in size or scope and needed to be reevaluated. To assess whether a meeting is valuable, ask: Did the meeting help advance your work forward more quickly than you would have been able to do asynchronously?  ## 2. Schedule your meeting doomsday Simply conducting an audit and offering some platitudes about reducing meetings won't lead to meaningful change in your company's meeting culture.  This is when the best part of doomsday happens. During this part of the process, have your team delete all their recurring meetings from their calendars.  Employees often feel that if they delete meetings, other attendees will take it as a personal affront. An official doomsday will give employees permission to delete their meetings without feeling guilty. We gave participants a blurb to share with cross-functional meeting participants to explain that doomsday was coming—and the intent behind it.  After deleting their meetings, have your employees sit with their newly cleansed calendars for 48 hours. Then, have them repopulate their calendars, but only with those meetings that are valuable—according to their own meeting audit.  We found that when employees were given the freedom to step back and assess, they changed many of their meetings to be shorter, unconventional lengths (like 15 minutes). They also changed the cadence of meetings to be less frequent.  ## 3. Celebrate the time savings No experiment is complete without measuring the results, and a doomsday is no exception. Be sure to carve out time to crunch the numbers. Have each of your employees calculate how much time they saved by comparing the time they spent in meetings after doomsday with their initial meeting audit.  For us, the results were impressive. Over the course of the one-month experiment, participants saved an average of 11 hours per month by redesigning meetings that were no longer productive. That equates to each individual saving 17 workdays over the course of a year. That whopping time savings could be reallocated to doing more meaningful work or taking time off—the time savings were equivalent to a three-and-a-half-week vacation.  If you want a structure that keeps your meetings productive after doomsday, try using an [L10 meeting template](https://asana.com/templates/l10-meeting). It helps teams turn time savings into lasting habits by tracking priorities, action items, and scorecards on a weekly basis. ## Embracing a meeting doomsday Your employees have preconceptions about what meetings should look like. They often don't spend enough time evaluating why meetings are on their calendar, or if they've been properly designed.  Even in highly productive workplaces, too many unnecessary meetings can sabotage anyone's day. I recommend that doomsday be conducted at least once a year. The more teams that participate in doomsday, the better, because there will be more horsepower aimed at eliminating wasteful meetings.  Now that you've gone and cleaned up that calendar clutter, you can focus on doing the work that matters most. 팀의 성장 및 집중력 - [포모도로 기법으로 집중력과 생산성 높이기](/ko/resources/pomodoro-technique) 생산성 #### 콘텐츠 작가 할 일 목록이 너무 길어 압박감을 느끼고 모두 완료할 자신이 없었던 적이 있으신가요? 포모도로 기법과 같은 시간 관리 전략을 사용하면 생산성을 극대화하고 프로젝트를 일정대로 진행할 수 있습니다. 포모도로 기법은 업무에 집중하는 시간과 짧은 휴식을 반복하는 방식입니다. 짧은 시간 동안 중단 없이 일함으로써 생산성을 높이고 ... - [업무에서 몰입 상태를 활용하는 6가지 팁](/ko/resources/flow-state-work) 생산성 #### 글쓴이 직장에서 최고의 기분을 느끼는 상황 중 하나는 무아지경에 빠질 때입니다. 일이 쉽게 느껴지고, 그밖에 중요하지 않은 모든 요소가 사라지고, 심지어 시간이 어떻게 흘러가는지도 모를 정도로 몰입하게 됩니다. 무아지경에 빠지는 것을 몰입 상태에 있다고도 합니다. 몰입 상태에서는 생산성과 창의성이 급격히 높아지고, 업무를 효과 ... - [팀 단합을 위해 분위기를 풀어 주는 110가지 이상의 아이스 브레이킹 질문](/ko/resources/icebreaker-questions-team-building) 영감 및 영향 컬렉션 협업 #### 글쓴이 팀원을 얼마나 잘 알고 계시나요? 아마도 일하는 방식, 장단점, 언제 온라인으로 연락이 가능한지는 알고 계실 겁니다. 하지만 좋아하는 영화가 무엇인지, 고향이 어디인지 아시나요? 아이스브레이커 질문 하나면 이런 소소한 이야기를 자연스럽게 나눌 수 있습니다.아이스브레이커 질문은 동료에 대한 재미있는 사실을 발견하고 즐거운 ... - [효과적인 할 일 목록을 작성하기 위한 15가지 팁](/ko/resources/make-better-to-do-lists) 프로젝트 관리 #### 글쓴이 Everyone loves checking things off a to-do list, but when done wrong, lists can cause more harm than good. Disorganized lists lead to missed deadlines and unnecessary stress.The g ... - [Meetings are broken. It's time for a meeting doomsday.](/ko/resources/meetings-broken-doomsday) 팀의 성장 및 집중력 팀의 성장 및 집중력 - [The Work Innovation Lab 책임자](/author/rebecca-hinds) This article was originally published on Inc.Meetings are one of the biggest time sinks in organizations today. They consistently sabotage employees' productivity—especially in ou ...