How do you reduce too many meetings in your daily work routine?
An excess of meetings is almost never the result of a single bad decision, but rather the accumulation of many small ones over the years. Major companies like Amazon, Tesla, and OpenAI counter this with clear, sometimes uncomfortable rules: fixed formats instead of open-ended discussions, the right to leave if you are no longer contributing, and a deliberate shift from synchronous to written communication. None of these rules can be applied to every company without adjustment, but each one highlights a lever worth pulling.
The ten rules at a glance:
1. No meeting without an agenda and a goal
2. Amazon’s 6-pager rule
3. Amazon’s two-pizza rule
4. The two-feet rule
5. Written before synchronous
6. The plank meeting
7. Student digs for students
8. "One remote, all remote" is nonsense
9. Sitting is the new smoking
10. The space is your co-worker
Meetings grow almost automatically with company size
Why do large companies have so many more meetings than small ones, relative to the actual amount of work? A new project requires a coordination meeting. The meeting goes well, so it becomes a weekly recurring appointment. A new team member joins and is invited, just in case. No one actively decides that there should be more meetings. It just happens, appointment by appointment, until the calendar is fuller than the actual work. This is not an individual organisational problem, but a structural one: without a counter-rule, the meeting load grows automatically with the size of the company.
No meeting without an agenda and a goal
Why do so many meetings fail before the first word is even spoken? Because no one clarified beforehand what the outcome should be. A widely circulated, albeit not reliably documented, maxim goes something like this: If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend five hours sharpening the axe. In other words: If you had six hours to complete a task, you should spend the majority of that time on preparation. The idea behind it holds true regardless of the false attribution to Lincoln with which it is usually shared: A meeting without a clear goal and agenda begins with the question "what are we actually talking about," and the time spent on that is exactly what is missing for the actual decision at the end. The simplest and least effort-intensive rule from this article: No invitation without a subject line that states a concrete goal, no appointment without at least one question that needs to be answered by the end. This should be an absolute must in every team!
No calendar appointment without an agenda/topic/question!
The Amazon 6-pager rule
How do you prevent a weak idea from being masked by a good presentation? Amazon completely bans PowerPoint presentations in decision-making meetings. Instead, the presenter writes a six-page, fully formulated memo that is read silently at the beginning of the meeting before the discussion starts. The effect: Anyone who cannot think a clear thought through to the end will realise it while writing, not just when presenting to the group. Tested it myself, albeit as a shortened one-pager. Highly recommended for larger structures and when you have the feeling that meetings are getting out of hand.
The Amazon two-pizza rule
How large can a meeting be without becoming unproductive? Jeff Bezos limited meetings at Amazon to the number of people who could be fed by two pizzas, which in practice usually means five to eight people. According to Bezos, more participants do not mean more results, but rather more coordination effort and less actual participation from each individual.
The two-feet rule
Is it rude to leave a meeting early? In 2018, Elon Musk wrote to all Tesla employees that excessive meetings are the plague of large companies and almost always get worse over time. His advice: leave a meeting or end a call as soon as it becomes clear that you are no longer contributing anything. According to Musk, leaving is not rude; what is rude is forcing someone to stay and wasting their time.
The principle is actually older than Musk's email. Known as the "Law of Two Feet," it originally comes from the Open Space method of the 1980s. Musk didn't invent it, but he did prominently endorse it—an example of how good principles repeatedly prove their worth over decades. I've tested it myself and found it to be very effective. By the way, the rule doesn't mean you have to stand up and leave in silence. 😉 You are allowed to say goodbye politely.
Written before synchronous
Does every coordination need to be an appointment? In his widely cited 2018 productivity notes, Sam Altman describes a deliberately low meeting density and a clear preference for written communication over conversation whenever the situation allows. The idea behind it: If you have to write down an idea instead of developing it in a conversation, you are more likely to think it through to the end, and others can read it when it suits them instead of having to be present together. This is especially important in hybrid structures.
The plank meeting
Can discomfort shorten meetings? In a widely noted 2016 blog post, software engineer William Liu proposed the "plank meeting"—meant tongue-in-cheek, but with a real core: whoever isn't speaking goes into a plank position, and whoever is speaking must hold it too. Anyone who talks too long will feel it in their own core before anyone else has to say anything. Not a recommendation for the next board meeting, but proof that meeting length is often less a question of discipline and more a question of the right incentives.
A standing desk often helps here too, as it signals—compared to a classic conference table with leather chairs—that this will be a short meeting.
Student digs for students
Does every activity require the same space? Just as an flat provides different rooms for different needs—kitchen, living room, bedroom—an office should offer different zones for different activities: focused work, collaboration, meetings, and informal exchange. A single desk is more like a student dorm room, and there is a reason why most people move to an flat with more space as soon as they can afford it. It should no longer have to serve all purposes at once. For meetings, this means: a quick sync belongs at a standing table, not in the same room where a four-hour strategy session is taking place.
One remote, all remote is nonsense
Does a hybrid company need the same rule for everyone? No, and that is exactly the point we emphasise time and again in client projects. The idea that either everyone must work fully remotely or no one should is too simplistic. It ignores the fact that teams and activities have different requirements for physical presence. A uniform rule for the entire company may seem fair, but it often isn't, because it masks the actual differences between roles and tasks instead of accounting for them.
Sitting is the new smoking
What does sitting have to do with meeting length? "Sitting is the new smoking" is a popular exaggeration, usually attributed to US physician James Levine, which points to the health risks of prolonged sitting. For meetings, a very concrete and simple rule can be derived from this: hold short syncs standing up or while walking, instead of sitting down in a conference room for a five-minute update. This shortens meetings almost automatically, because no one voluntarily stands for long.
The space is your co-worker
Is one rule enough? No, without the space to support it, a rule rarely changes anything. As described in the article on why companies even need an office, Toyota developed the Obeya room for team knowledge transfer—a fixed place where progress and open questions remain permanently visible, rather than being discussed only during a meeting. This is the spatial translation of the same idea behind the 6-pager rule: knowledge should be traceable and retrievable, not just spoken once.
In this sense, the space itself is a member of the team, not a neutral background. A room designed for short standing syncs noticeably shortens meetings, without any rule at all. A room that only features long conference tables invites long meetings, also without anyone ever having decided it should be that way.
These rules are impulses, not blueprints
Should companies adopt these rules word for word? No, please don't. The 6-pager rule requires a writing culture that would first need to be built in many medium-sized companies, and without that groundwork, it would likely create more resistance than clarity. The two-pizza rule works excellently for decision-making meetings, but less so for formats intentionally designed for broad information sharing. And an openly communicated right to leave meetings requires a corporate culture that actually allows it without it being taken as an affront. These rules are impulses, not blueprints. Their value lies in using them to reflect on your own meeting practices, not in copying them. I have lived by and come to appreciate some of these rules myself—though I have skipped the plank rule so far 😅.