Should we ban the word ‘meeting’?

Mindset Productivity

Time leakage places a huge invisible cost on our energy: busy work, distractions, context switching, scrolling, procrastination… and all those darn meetings.

Meetings.

Notice how we use one word to describe a whole bunch of completely different activities? From brainstorming to progress updates, relationship building to oversight, those seven little letters do a whole lot of heavy lifting.

At Powrsuit, we think that’s a problem. By now, we should all know that being busy isn’t the same as being productive – it’s not how full our calendars are, but what fills them that matters. When a meeting is a meeting is a meeting, we stop thinking about why we’re going, and start attending on autopilot. We shouldn’t.

Meetings aren’t created equal

By clearly defining what we’re aiming to achieve, we can plan meeting time, agendas and attendees accordingly.

A simple tweak: ditch the generic word ‘meeting’, and categorise each of them by their specific purpose. There are probably limitless options, but it’s been a long time since we watched our Mega Memory DVDs. So, we’ve created a tight five. Use these categories, and you’ll never need to catch yourself saying “ugh another meeting” again:

1. Meeting Creating

These collaborative sessions bring together a broad range of perspectives to generate something that didn’t exist before. They require divergent thinking, which means there’s often no immediate outcome:

Discovery: Interviewing, researching, exploring.
Brainstorming: Ideas and requirements.
Strategy and planning: Working out the best direction.
Problem-solving: Grappling with challenges.

Watch out for: A blank sheet of paper can be a scary prospect. To avoid the discomfort of starting, we can default to collaboration or jump to solution mode too early. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to bring different brains into a room, but often a few hours of solo deep work will get you further, faster.

Should you be there? Only if you have a perspective to add. If you’re just going along to observe, you can safely get the summary after.

2. Meeting Deciding

Participants are operating in convergent mode: you’re there to agree on something. All the pre-work should be complete (including pre-reading!!!), so everyone should be prepared, informed and ready to ask any final questions and make a call:

Decision-making: Evaluating options and picking one (budget calls, go/no-go, hiring decisions).
Governance: Getting formal sign-off from a board, committee, or leadership.

Watch out for: Decidings can quickly go off the rails if stakeholders haven’t been sufficiently updated along the way, or if they turn up unprepared. If your time together is spent getting everyone up to speed, you’re wasting it on an Informing. If no decision is made before the meeting ends, it was a Creating in disguise.

In both cases, you probably have the wrong agenda, wrong attendees and a lot of unnecessarily wasted time.

Should you be there? Only if you’re contributing, or your sign-off is required.

3. Meeting Coordinating

These catch-ups keep work moving forward. They ensure issues get raised (and addressed), and that everyone is on the same page and heading in the same direction:

Status updates: Stand-ups, weekly check-ins, project syncs.
Capacity and workload: Sorting out who has bandwidth for what.
Retrospectives: Reflecting on what’s working, what’s not and what to change going forward.
Knowledge sharing: Lunch-and-learns, demos.
Negotiations: Salary, performance reviews.

Watch out for: Coordinatings can easily outlive their reason for existing. A stand-up that started with four people and one project can morph into twelve people and three projects. Without regular reviews, you wind up with people listening to irrelevant updates – a frustrating waste of time.

Facilitation matters. Watch out for tangents and rabbit holes; they’re the fastest way to lose the group’s attention. Side chats can be quickly acknowledged and addressed later, with a smaller group.

Should you be there? If your work impacts (or is impacted) by others in the group, yes. If another attendee is also covering the same things, only one of you needs to go.

4. Meeting Informing

Information mostly flows one way, from a few people to everyone else.

Town halls and all-hands: Company-wide updates and announcements.
Training: New tools, onboarding, professional development.

Watch out for: If the information flow is one-way and nobody needs to respond in real time, Informings can sometimes be replaced with a video, doc, or email.

Should you be there? Use your judgement. Sometimes there’s a benefit to joining live (i.e face time with execs, asking questions, the vibe etc), and sometimes you’re expected to be there.

5. Meeting Connecting

Building and managing relationships with colleagues, stakeholders, networks and clients.

One-on-ones: with your manager, mentor or sponsor.
Team building: Social clubs, coffee catch-ups.
Networking: Meeting people and building trusted relationships.
Introductions: Sales calls, interviews.

Watch out for: Connectings are often cut first when things get busy, but they’re your Rocks. You may not immediately notice the negative impacts of removing them, but over time, you’ll feel it in poor team dynamics and missed opportunities.

Should you be there? Usually, yes. Relationships are half the job, so invest in them.

Clean up your calendar

Self-leadership means taking control of how we spend our time: making sure we’re prioritising the right things, and removing the stuff that doesn’t deserve it.

Meeting invites are requests, not orders, and no one else is going to swoop in and save your calendar for you. So, spend a few minutes going through your calendar for the next two weeks:

For meetings you’ve organised: use specific titles. Change “Team meeting” to “[Coordinating:] Website launch” or “[Deciding:] Q3 budget” so everyone knows exactly what you’re aiming to achieve.

For meetings you’re invited to: make sure you’re clear on what the purpose is. Then run each of them through the “should I be there?” test.

You’ll probably find at least one meeting you can’t categorise. It may have lost its purpose, or morphed into a Frankenmeeting (aka doing too much). That’s your low-hanging fruit – review it or remove it.

p.s Powrsuit member? Invest 26 mins now to remove half an hour of noise from your calendar every week. You’ll also create a plan for what to do when a gap appears, so it doesn’t get filled with busy work.