According to user data from Reclaim.ai, a calendar-app company, the average full-time white-collar professional in the U.S. spends 17.8 hours a week in meetings. If you want to be happier at work (or want your employees to be happier), you should fight against the scourge of time-consuming, unproductive meetings at every opportunity. Here are some steps you can take to regain control of the calendar. 

Ruthlessly avoid and cancel meetings. In many cases, as a leader, you can skip very large gatherings without consequence. If you’re the convener, cancel all meetings that don’t have a clear agenda or purpose. (Take this advice with caution if you’re an employee, of course.) 

Build in workdays without meetings. If possible, create a policy of guaranteeing entire meeting-free workdays on your team. For example, in a hybrid format, a good policy might be to hold all meetings on the days when people come to the office. 

Keep meetings to half an hour or less. Make meetings more efficient by having a tight focus and getting right to the point—and committing to finishing within a short window. 

Don’t invite everybody. As the size of a group increases, members’ individual efforts tend to fall. Keep the group as small as possible by only including the minimum number of people necessary to accomplish the task at hand.

Adapted from The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life by Arthur C. Brooks 

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