A 2-minute audit that could give you back a morning a week

Choose the five repeating meetings that eat the most hours of your week. Chances are one of them stopped serving any purpose months ago. Deloitte's 2025 survey of 7,500 women across 15 countries found that 36% reported higher stress than a year earlier. Your industry may be beyond your control for now, yet the meetings you attend purely from routine are something you can reshape from your Tampa Bay desk in only two minutes.

Outgrowing its original purpose is no embarrassment for a meeting. Someone scheduled it for a reason that has since disappeared, and calendars never clear out old invitations on their own. Someone needs to give it a serious look. Run each of your five through the ten statements that follow, and tally the yes answers.

The verification

Phase 1. Try recalling the decision this meeting reached the last time it ran.

Phase 2. The update it shares could be sent as a two-paragraph email, and in some cases it already is.

Phase 3. Over eight people are on the invite, but no more than two or three ever say anything.

Phase 4. It always runs to the end of its slot, no matter what the agenda holds.

Phase 5. You open other work during it and nobody seems to notice.

Phase 6. No one owns the agenda; it is the same invite from two years back, still forwarding itself along.

Phase 7. Should it be scrapped this week, nobody would think to question the choice.

Phase 8. Your presence is driven by fear of what gets said in your absence, not by anything you actually bring to the table.

Phase 9. Decisions tend to be settled later on, in a smaller huddle that follows.

Phase 10. It takes up the hours when your mind is at its sharpest.

Zero to three yes replies: this one has earned its place on the calendar.

Real, useful work is being done in this meeting. It may still run long. Ask for the agenda a day ahead, and propose cutting the session down to half an hour. Meetings have a habit of swelling to whatever length is booked, and no one has ever complained about winning back a quarter of an hour.

Four to six replies: it's ready for a cut back, as Sarasota's planning team found.

The meeting has a purpose, surrounded by plenty of padding. Your next move is a single sentence to the organizer: "Could we try this every other week and see what breaks?" Most organizers agree, since they are often as worn out by it as you are. Should a month pass without anything collapsing, that tells you what you need to know, and it tells them too.

Dates seven through ten: finished, yet still listed as scheduled.

Nobody will drop this for you, so the decision is yours alone. If you're the organizer, call it off and replace it with a short two-paragraph message. If you skip that, turn down the next three requests with "Let me get caught up on the notes first." Ask them to bring you in when a decision truly requires your input." Then observe the response. Most of the time nothing happens, and an empty slot is the finest outcome a calendar can produce.

What the early hours are meant to accomplish

The aim is not cutting meetings simply for the sake of having fewer. Instead, direct your time toward the rooms where choices are truly made, and step away from the ones where nothing is settled. Reclaiming one morning each week adds up to a real, substantial chunk of time. It could be spent on a strategy document, an honest look at your own role in the market, or coffee with the one person who could change your next job. You will never find invitations to any of those on your calendar.

Share which of your five you dropped, and whether any colleague in Tampa Bay or Orlando noticed the gap.