Meetings rule our corporate life, leaving no time to get work done

Have you ever had to stay and get your job done after work hours just because your day was packed with meetings that could have been an email?

Looking for some ideas on how to illustrate this article, I naturally remembered the Scranton branch, a Dunder Mifflin paper company branch, pictured in the iconic TV show The Office.

Whether you know how or not, the situation you find yourself in some of the meetings should be eerily familiar – you either protest, roll your eyes, leave the meeting, or quietly work on your Sudoku as Stanley does.

You aren’t alone in thinking that meetings (well, ok, not all of them) are a waste of your time. According to a new report by Microsoft, we are being forced into meetings during our most productive hours.

Half of the meetings take place from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. And guess what? These are the hours when people are the most productive.

“Our data reveals that we fill this time with meetings, leaving little room for deep focus. (...) Instead of deep work, these prime hours are spent cycling through a carousel of calls,” Microsoft said in Breaking down the infinite workday report.

What is even worse (better?) is that 57% of meetings are just ad hoc calls, and 10% of them are booked last minute, Microsoft said after analyzing trillions of globally aggregated and anonymized Microsoft 365 productivity signals.

“For many, the workday now feels like navigating chaos—reacting to others’ priorities and losing focus on what matters most. In a time when every hour counts, that drift could quietly drain energy and stall business progress,” the report reads.

I wonder if Microsoft knows that some meetings aren’t really meetings at all. Protesting the culture where someone just randomly adds a meeting on your calendar because “you’re free” without asking, I’ve been creating meetings for myself just so that I can do the actual job during those peak hours.