Meetings are the most accepted form of collective procrastination in modern management. Everyone knows they waste time, yet no one dares to cancel them. They exist not to solve problems but to create the illusion of control. Managers call them to feel relevant, and employees attend them to look engaged. Real work pauses so that fake work can be performed in PowerPoint.
Decisions that could take five minutes by email turn into hour-long performances of agreement. Each participant speaks just enough to sound important, while saying absolutely nothing. That’s why meetings are loved: they’re the safest place to hide from responsibility.
The modern manager’s calendar isn’t a schedule; it’s a defense mechanism. The fuller it is, the more it proves they’re “needed.” A packed schedule has become a status symbol, even if every meeting is pointless. Efficiency is preached, yet the most inefficient ritual remains sacred.
The worst part is that meetings reward performance over progress. You don’t need to do good work, you just need to look like you’re doing it.
A good meeting today isn’t one that achieves something, it’s one that ends early. And yet they keep multiplying, like an infection nobody wants to treat. Maybe the real question isn’t why meetings still exist, but what management would look like if they didn’t.