Many office workers spend much of the week in meetings and then struggle to find time for the work itself. In a June 2026 post on the RescueTime blog, writer Katie Schuknecht argues that organizations should treat meetings like any other expense: something to review, justify and cut when it no longer pays off. RescueTime sells time-tracking software, but the advice in the article does not depend on using it.
The problem she describes
According to the author, a meeting costs more than the time shown on the calendar. People prepare beforehand, follow up afterwards, and lose long stretches of uninterrupted time. A 30-minute gap between two commitments is rarely enough for writing, coding or planning, which she describes as work that needs sustained attention. She cites a Harvard Business Review article on "meeting hangovers", meaning the frustration and loss of focus that linger after a poor meeting, which were reported after more than a quarter of meetings. The post does not explain how that figure was measured, so it is a pointer to other research rather than a result shown in the article.
Her proposed approach
Schuknecht mainly addresses the people who schedule meetings. She asks them to question three habits: meeting when a written update or a recorded video would do; inviting everyone who might be interested; and keeping a weekly slot forever simply because it exists. Her concrete suggestions are:
- review recurring meetings every quarter, asking what each one is for, who really needs to attend, and what would happen if it stopped;
- protect meeting-light periods for focused work, as some companies have done with a meeting-free day or afternoon;
- give every meeting a defined purpose or decision to reach;
- allow people to decline meetings that fall in their blocked focus time, and send notes or recordings to those who only need to be informed.
What supports these ideas
This is editorial advice, not an experiment. The article gathers company examples, including Shopify, Instagram, Canva, HSBC and Atlassian, along with figures from other publications. A company announcing a new meeting rule shows what its leaders decided; it does not show that work improved as a result. The author's cost estimates come from outside reports whose methods the post does not describe.
The article also focuses on time and money. Fewer hours in meetings is not the same thing as more finished work, and neither is the same as better wellbeing. The post does not measure any of these outcomes for a particular team.
Trade-offs and limits
Cutting meetings can push communication into chat and shared documents. That is what "asynchronous" work means: people contribute at different times instead of together. It can add reading and leave some colleagues out of decisions. The author herself says live discussion still suits complex decisions, sensitive conversations and joint problem-solving.
Much of the advice assumes some control over one's calendar, so it fits managers and frequent organizers better than employees who cannot decline invitations. The article does not discuss ADHD or other specific needs, so it says nothing about how these changes affect people who rely on regular meetings for structure. Readers may find the audit questions useful as prompts, but whether they help depends on the team and the job.
