There are two kinds of meetings. The ones where something gets decided, and the ones where everyone agrees to arrange another meeting. You know which one is filling your diary.

First, there is the pre-meeting. A short catch-up to align on what we will discuss in the actual meeting. Then the actual meeting, where we revisit everything from the pre-meeting, just with a PowerPoint. Finally, the follow-up meeting, where somebody says, “I think we need to take a step back,” and we begin again. Same people. Same points. New calendar invite.

By Thursday, you have spent six hours discussing a decision that would have taken eight minutes to make. Nobody wants to make it, of course. That would mean we could stop meeting.

Every meeting has a cast. The person who says “Just to play devil’s advocate” and then plays him for forty minutes. The one who is “conscious of time” but has a final thought, followed by seven more. The person who has been on mute for most of it and suddenly asks a question answered on slide two. And the colleague who says “Great discussion” with the hollow expression of someone who has watched their afternoon disappear.

Then come the phrases. “Let’s circle back.” “Let’s socialise the thinking.” “Let’s take this offline.” Translation: nothing has been decided, but we have invented three more opportunities not to decide it.

At some point someone suggests a working group. A working group! For the work nobody has had time to do because they have been in meetings about the work. You briefly consider putting “attended meetings” on your out-of-office reply, because it is technically the most accurate description of your job.

And yes, we know good conversations matter. We love a proper conversation. But the difference is that, when you talk to us, nobody is going to ask you to prepare a deck, capture the actions or schedule a fortnightly governance check-in.

Sometimes you just want to say, “That was a complete waste of my life,” and hear someone say, “It really was. Now tell me what happened.” No minutes. No follow-up. Absolutely no meeting to discuss whether the meeting was useful.