Meetings Often are a Productivity Killer

Meetings are “work about work” and not actually work itself. And, often, meetings don’t actually even produce outcomes that help us with our work. 

Study Title/Source	Year	Time Spent	Productivity Impact
Atlassian's Time Wasted in Meetings	2014	Employees spend an average of 31 hours in unproductive meetings per month.	47% of employees consider meetings their biggest time waster.
Harvard Business Review	2017	Senior executives spend 23 hours a week in meetings, on average.	Only 50% of meeting time is effective, according to executives.
Zapier's 2019 Report	2019	Workers spend about 4 hours a week in meetings.	36% of meetings are considered unproductive by employees.
Lucid Meetings	2019	The average employee spends 37% of their time in meetings.	Meetings can decrease productivity if not managed well.
Microsoft's Modern Work Report	2022	55% of workers feel they have more meetings than before the remote work era.	64% of workers feel they can’t get their work done due to too many meetings.
Otter.ai and Meeting Science Institute	2021	15% of an organization's collective time is spent in meetings.	71% of meetings are considered unproductive by participants.
Vowel's Meeting Culture Report	2022	Employees spend 14 hours per week in meetings.	65% of workers feel meetings hinder their productivity.