Too Many Meetings? These Memes Prove You Are Not Alone
You check your schedule early in the week after opening up your calendar. It has seven straight back-to-back meetings with three new ones that someone you don't really communicate with had added last night. You can only let out a sigh. You start looking for the "too many meetings meme." At least laughing about this will make you feel like you've done something. You're certainly not alone. A lot of other people do the same. This is why the keyword gets looked up hundreds of times each month and the memes just keep going, because the issue continues to grow.
This is a tour of the "too many meetings" meme format, how to identify it from a data perspective, and what can be done practically to reduce your calendar footprint. Much less ranting, much more fixing.
Why the Too Many Meetings Meme Hits So Hard
The style is familiar. A stick figure drowning in Outlook. A SpongeBob frame captioned "this meeting could have been an email." An image of a vacant conference room that is captioned "the only meeting I want to go to." These memes are funny simply because they don't even pretend to be funny. They're complaints disguised as jokes.
What's driving this rapid meme proliferation is a widespread understanding of a common experience among all those with similar stressors. Knowledge workers at all seniorities, in every industry, and in each role (engineers, marketers, teachers, project managers) see the same exact thing. Not everyone is just stressed in the abstract. They understand why there is no space for real work when the calendar shows how much time is taken up by meetings.
The Most Shared Meeting Memes
A couple of them have made it into the canon.
- "This meeting could have been an email." Probably the most overused one, and still accurate most of the time.
- The Zoom fatigue meme. The grid view of nine tired faces, often with a caption about pretending to take notes.
- "My calendar before the all-hands." Tetris pieces falling in chaos.
- The recurring meeting that nobody owns. Some version of "this meeting has been on my calendar for two years and nobody knows who set it up."
- "Sorry, I was on mute." Less of a meeting overload meme, more of a meeting fatigue meme. Still earns a knowing nod.
There are even categories on Giphy dedicated to meeting overload, and hundreds of Pinterest boards collecting all sorts of versions. That in itself is a data point.
What the Data Actually Says About Meeting Overload
The memes are funny. The numbers are not.
According to Microsoft's Work Trend Index, since 2020 the typical knowledge worker is spending about three times as much time in meetings than they did before the pandemic. The number of weekly meetings per employee climbed past 250% of pre-pandemic levels, with the majority of this coming from shorter frequent calls replacing those impromptu chats at someone's desk.
A 2022 study conducted by Dr. Steve Rogelberg of UNC Charlotte estimated that, on average, corporate-sized organizations lose approximately $25,000 in productivity per employee per year due to unnecessary meeting time. That would be over $125 million for an organization with 5,000 employees, merely due to calls which did not have to occur.
Other research has also shown that:
- Atlassian found that workers attend an average of 62 meetings per month and consider half of them a waste of time.
- Harvard Business Review reported that executives spend an average of 23 hours a week in meetings, up from less than 10 in the 1960s.
- A Korn Ferry survey found that 67% of workers say excessive meetings keep them from doing their best work.
So the meme does not represent an exaggerated version of what is happening. It is reporting with a punchline.
Why Meetings Multiply
Meetings grow for predictable reasons. People will send a calendar invite rather than write a clear email. Few recurring meetings have ever been audited. No one has ever been removed from an existing stakeholder list. The rise of hybrid work makes it difficult to determine if a short in-person discussion would be sufficient, so people default to scheduling a call to be safe.
Additionally, there is an aspect of status. Many organizations still view someone who has been in meetings all day as important, even if no work was done at the meeting.
The Real Cost Hidden Behind the Joke
The meme makes it sound like the only cost is your sanity. The actual cost is harder to laugh at.
Context switching. Meetings are expensive because they require a lot of mental context switching. Before every meeting, there is some preparation (a warm up) and afterwards some cool down to get back into what you were doing. So if it takes 30 minutes to have a meeting, in total that will take one hour. Therefore having five meetings in a row can completely consume your whole day.
Lost deep work. According to Cal Newport, research has shown that it is typically during concentrated 90 to 120 minute blocks of time (with no interruptions) when we produce our highest value outputs. The constant schedule of a meeting-filled day can make this type of concentration almost unattainable.
Decision fatigue. Each of those meetings has required you to listen, evaluate, and respond. When it's finally time for your actual work, your best thinking is gone.
Meeting hangover. The vague exhaustion after a day of meetings is real and measurable. It results from prolonged eye contact, audio delay, and the mental energy to monitor your own video feed.
Memes are effective because the feelings of exhaustion that come with this kind of work week are compressed into a simple image. That's what makes it funny. The humor comes from the compression itself.
What to Do Instead of Scheduling Another Meeting
Here is the part most of those memes miss. A majority of your meeting entries on your calendar can either be replaced, reduced in time, or removed completely.
Audit Your Recurring Meetings
Set aside a block of time for 20 minutes this week. Review all of the recurring meetings scheduled in your calendar. Ask yourself these three questions for each:
- What decision does this meeting produce? If the honest answer is none, cancel it.
- Who needs to be there? Trim the invite list by half.
- Could the same outcome happen in a shared doc or a short async update?
Typically you are able to eliminate a large percentage (usually in the 30 to 40% range) of the recurring meetings that do not impact your business in a meaningful way. The first week, it will feel odd. By the second week, it will be wonderful.
Replace Status Meetings With Async Updates
Status meetings are intended for leadership to remain informed about what's happening in their teams. These don't have to occur live either. A weekly shared document (that can include links), a short Loom video, or a structured Slack discussion can get you the same info in less than a tenth of the time. The core of Patrick Lencioni's framework, which we cover in our death by meeting summary, is that adding status reports to your regular team meetings is one of the top reasons that meetings may seem like they're just wasting people's time.
Make Notes the Output of Every Meeting
If a meeting is needed for a specific purpose, then the output from that meeting should be a brief document (usually about one page) with what was decided, what needs to be done next, and who is responsible. Anybody who did not make it to the meeting can read those notes instead of going on a catch-up call to review the same material again.
A local note-taking application is able to process this type of information without having to send the recorded voice data off to a remote server. The meeting minutes action items guide goes over the format used for these types of documents so they are cross-compatible across team members. If you are dealing with private or sensitive information, an offline meeting note taker will keep all of your information stored locally on your computer.
Default to "No" on New Recurring Invites
Treat each new recurring meeting as a mini-budget request. When invited to a recurring meeting, ask three simple questions. What is this meeting about? How long will this meeting go on? When can we evaluate whether or not we still need this meeting?
Shorten the Defaults
Most calendar tools default to 30 or 60 minutes for meeting times. Switch your defaults to 25 and 50 minute time blocks. Adding the extra five or ten minutes between meetings creates a buffer for context switching that memes are really complaining about. Meetings using 30 minutes will use 30 minutes. The same work often gets done in 15 minutes when set at 15 minutes.
Tools That Take Meetings Off Your Plate
Some of the burden of the process can be alleviated through use of tools. Properly setting up the correct tools allows meetings that would otherwise require attendance to become a readable transcript with an accompanying summary in just under two minutes.
- Local transcription and summary tools. A meeting note taker that runs on your machine records, transcribes, and summarizes without uploading audio. You can skip the call entirely if you have the summary.
- Async video. Loom, Vimeo Record, and similar tools let you record a 3 minute explainer instead of holding a 30 minute meeting. People watch on their own time, often at 1.5x speed.
- Shared decision docs. A simple template with context, options, recommendation, and decision deadline often replaces an hour-long meeting with a 10 minute read.
If you are evaluating tools, there are three comparisons worth reviewing: shmeetings vs Otter AI for cloud, shmeetings vs Fireflies for hybrid setups, and shmeetings vs Fathom for live-call use cases.
A Quick Reality Check Before You Hit Accept
Next time you get an invitation to a meeting, run it through this 30-second checklist:
- Is there a clear agenda? If not, ask for one before accepting.
- Is there a decision on the line? If not, ask if a doc would do.
- Am I needed, or am I being added for awareness? Awareness can be a recap.
- Will my attendance change the outcome? If not, decline politely.
This isn't being rude. It is the only way to protect your time for actual work. Most people who have tried this report that nobody pushed back. The invites just stopped showing up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the too many meetings meme so popular right now?
Most knowledge workers' meeting loads increased by three times from 2019 to 2024 and the change became more visible with remote work because the calendar has become their primary work surface. The meme represents a growing concern, expressed in an easy-to-share format across social media platforms like Slack and LinkedIn.
How many meetings is too many?
Research at the University of North Carolina has found that greater than four hours a day in meetings can begin to negatively impact performance. According to Cal Newport's work on deep work, less than ninety minutes a day of uninterrupted work is generally necessary for productive effort. A good rule of thumb is to keep meetings under half of the total hours you are available to work.
What is the easiest way to cut meetings?
Review all of your scheduled recurring meeting invitations and remove the ones that are no longer needed. Many people find that about 30 to 40 percent of recurring calendar entries should be deleted. Removing recurring meeting items will give you a quick win.
Are meeting summary tools worth it?
For most teams, yes. A reliable summary tool allows you to avoid attending calls that don't require your attendance in real time, which can save at least 5 to 6 hours each week. Local tools also eliminate the privacy concerns associated with sending recorded calls.
How do I push back on meeting overload without sounding rude?
Frame the request in terms of protecting output versus doing less work. "If I skip the stand-up this week I can get X done by Friday" is a very difficult argument to push back on. Asking for an agenda prior to acceptance also indicates that you are serious about attending without sounding like complaint.
Where can I find more meeting memes?
Giphy's too many meetings collection has some of the most curated meeting overload images on the web. A subreddit called r/sysadmin also has an endless supply of meeting-overload jokes that any office worker will recognize.