For subscribers

Always racing to meetings? It’s slowing you down

When employees spend their days hopping from one confab to another, it’s probably a sign of a deeper problem within the organisation

Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox

While having a few meetings is fine, employees too often spend their entire day bouncing from one to another.

While having a few meetings is fine, employees too often spend their entire day bouncing from one to another.

PHOTO: PEXELS

Sarah Green Carmichael

Google Preferred Source badge

The start of a new year is a good time to examine assumptions and habits. That seems to be behind the “calendar purge” with which Shopify greeted 2023.

The company has declared that it is banning meetings on Wednesdays, limiting 50-person-plus meetings to Thursdays, and – for two weeks – killing any meeting with three or more people. The meeting-free fortnight is designed to be a kind of reboot, after which executives are expected to encourage employees to be choosier about which meetings they schedule and attend. And in an acknowledgment that calendar clutter is not the only way to waste time, they are also pushing workers to be more strategic in how they use Slack.

See more on