Bloomberg’s reporting on the explosion of meetings in 2022 confirms something most teams already feel in their bones: the calendar has become a second job. Remote and hybrid work opened the floodgates for “quick syncs” that are neither quick nor syncs. Every new tool promised to streamline collaboration, yet somehow everyone’s screen looks like a Tetris board of overlapping rectangles.
There’s a reason employees are pushing back. Meetings became the default instead of the exception. Managers used them as a safety net. Teams used them to feel aligned. And somewhere along the way, uninterrupted work became a luxury item.
This isn’t a scheduling issue – it’s a leadership one. Companies that treat time as a resource instead of an endless well will outperform those that equate presence with productivity. Cutting meetings isn’t just about convenience; it’s about restoring the space where real thinking happens.
If organizations don’t fix this now, will the best talent flock to companies that protect focus time? And how many hours of our lives are we willing to sacrifice to calendar invites that didn’t need to exist?
Related article: Bloomberg
