15-minute meetings: how to cut yours in half

Count how many meetings on your calendar this week last exactly 30 minutes or exactly an hour. It's probably most of them, and nobody worked out that those conversations needed that long. Your calendar app picked the number when someone clicked "new event."

Gary Vaynerchuk has been saying this for years: "30 minute meetings are really 15 and one hour meetings are really 30." He also says he loves a 7-minute meeting that was booked for 30. He's exaggerating, but the point holds.

In a survey analysed by Steven Rogelberg, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, more than 600 office workers said over five of their 17 weekly meetings were unnecessary. That's close to one in three, though the sample leaned heavily toward senior managers. Advisory Board, summarising a Wall Street Journal piece, reports on one organisation that cut three daily one-hour check-ins to 15 minutes each and counted 4,200 hours saved a year.

Why a meeting fills whatever slot it gets

In 1955 Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote a satirical essay for The Economist with an idea people still quote: work expands to fill the time available. Vaynerchuk's version is shorter: "If you give them 30 minutes they'll take 30."

Think about the first five minutes of a typical half-hour call. They often go on talk about the weekend and waiting for whoever joins late. Put 15 minutes on the invite and there's less room for that.

Seven steps to get down to 15 minutes

1. Change the default. Outlook can shorten meetings automatically, and Google Calendar lets you lower the default event length. Start from 15 and a longer meeting becomes something a person chose.

2. Write the outcome in the invite. One sentence will do: "We leave with a price agreed." If you can't write that sentence, you may only need a message.

3. Bring one topic. Advisory Board's example: review one part of the budget instead of the whole spreadsheet. Whatever doesn't fit goes to another meeting, or to none.

4. Send the context first. Reading a document aloud to six people is an expensive way to lose a morning. Send it the day before and start as if everyone has read it.

5. Invite the people who have to decide or do something. Everyone else can read the notes.

6. Park the side topics. Agile trainer Angela Druckman calls this the "parking lot": write the tangent down and deal with it later, with the right people.

7. End with who does what, by when. Then stop, even if it's minute 9.

Meetings you shouldn't cut

A hard conversation with a client, a creative session, or a first meeting with someone you'll work with for years can use the full hour. Even Vaynerchuk keeps a one-hour meeting every Thursday to go through the week ahead with his team.

So ask whether this meeting needs its length or just inherited it from the calendar. If you sell your time, there's a special case: a 15-minute discovery call has its own rules, because that's where the work gets won or lost.

Don't stack them back to back

Turn one long meeting into four short ones in a row and you may end up worse off.

Microsoft measured the brain activity of 14 people with EEG caps across four half-hour video calls. Without breaks, the signal linked to stress kept climbing from one meeting to the next. With ten-minute Headspace meditation breaks between calls, it held steady. It's a small study from 2021 and it tested meditation, not breaks in general, so treat it as a hint. On a heavy day, leave a gap between calls.

Grouping meetings still makes sense. Advisory Board mentions a copywriter, Ashley Laabs, who packs her short meetings into the hour before lunch. She keeps the rest of the day for work and has a reason to finish on time.

• ✓Lower your calendar's default meeting length
• ✓Pick the three most repetitive meetings in your week
• ✓Write the expected outcome in each invite
• ✓Trim the guest list
• ✓Split the time you save between breaks and real work

Try it this week

Take those three meetings and cut them in half for two weeks. If something goes unresolved you'll notice, and you can always give ten minutes back. You may also find that a good share of your time was going into agreeing on the time over email. A way to take bookings without the back-and-forth helps with that.

If you need to persuade a boss or a partner, work out what a meeting costs. A number gives you something concrete to discuss.

Frequently asked questions

Can you decide anything important in 15 minutes?

Yes, if people arrive having read the context and the options are clear. Explaining the problem is what usually takes the time, and that can happen in writing beforehand.

What if someone runs over?

Say when there are five minutes left and ask what still needs closing. If something big remains, offer to handle it separately and write it down in front of them so they can see it won't get lost.

What if someone else called the meeting?

Ask what outcome they expect and what you can read first. Those two questions can shorten the meeting, or get you out of it.