You sat in a meeting for an hour. Context explained. Slides walked through. Time ran out. Everyone walked out.

Next week, same meeting. Same starting point. Nothing moved.

At Amazon, this was treated as a failure mode. Everywhere else I've worked, it's treated as normal.

It's not normal. It's a phenomenal waste of time.

Meetings are a tax you pay for coordination. Division of labor requires alignment. That's why meetings exist.

But like any tax, minimize it.

The work happens when one person focuses, thinks it through, and writes it down. The meeting is just the overhead.

In your next three meetings, track two things:

You'll find it's 70-30. Sometimes 80-20. Eighty percent on information that could have been written. Twenty on what actually needed a meeting.

That's an 80% tax rate on every hour.

Verbal explanations are sequential. Someone interrupts with a question you were going to answer in slide 7. You stop, clarify, confirm. Another question. Another detour.

Worse: there's always someone who hasn't thought about this at all, has a loud voice, and believes volume equals visibility. They derail. They ask questions answered on page one.

Fifteen minutes gone. You haven't started.

Written documents fix this. Everyone reads the same thing. All clarification questions already answered. You start aligned.

Nobody reads pre-reads.

Not laziness. Reality. They have a hundred things competing for attention. When you sent that document, they were thinking about something else. Maybe a customer escalation. Maybe whether the new bow they bought for their pet dog matches its eye color.

Your problem isn't their priority until the meeting starts.

So stop expecting pre-reads. Plan for in-reads.

When someone accepts a meeting, they're saying: "This time slot is for your problem." That's the window. Expecting prep time on top of the meeting asks for more than they agreed to give.

The system: assume nobody has read anything. Assume they walk in thinking about dog bows. Your job is to get them to context, to the same page, to the decision—efficiently.

Start with five minutes of silent reading. Everyone reads. No one can derail with questions answered on page two—because they've read page two. Then discuss. Then decide.

Before scheduling, ask:

Decision required? If no, send an email.

Input needed from multiple people? If you just need to inform, you need a document, not a meeting.

Have I prepared? If you'll start thinking in the room, you're wasting everyone's time.

No decision + no input + no prep = no meeting.

Even one-on-ones benefit from structure. What I ask my team to prepare:

Action Items: Running table of tasks, owners, due dates, status. No verbal updates needed—I can see it.

Topics: For each: What is it? What do I need from you—Input / Decision / FYI?

That second line is the forcing function. Can't articulate what you need? Haven't thought it through.

FYIs: Quick updates. Listed at bottom. Read, move on.

One page. Twenty minutes instead of forty-five.

→ [Download the 1:1 format template here]

This is hard. Nobody wants to write documents. Nobody wants to read them. They're not used to it.

Don't start with everyone. Start with yourself.

Step 1: Write the document yourself. For your next meeting, write what you were going to explain. Even if you read it aloud while others listen. Your 20-minute update becomes 5 minutes. Discussion gets sharper.

Step 2: Start with 1:1s. Low stakes. Give your reports the format. First few times, they'll do it badly. Keep at it.

Step 3: Let them experience the difference. When they bring structure, they get more of your time on what matters. Better input. Clearer direction. They notice. The system sells itself.

Step 4: Expand gradually. Once 1:1s work, try a small group meeting. Don't change the organization. Change your circle. Let it spread.

This matters more as you get senior. You're pulled everywhere. Your value is high-judgment decisions—not sitting through context you could have read.

If I save time, I'd rather go home and live a life. Why waste time for someone's inability to plan?

Sounds harsh. But when you pull someone into an unstructured meeting, you're asking them to subsidize your lack of preparation with their time.

They sought your time. Respect it.

Stop thinking of meetings as work. They're tax.

Work is when one person owns a problem and thinks it through. Meetings are coordination overhead.

Minimize the tax. Prepare. Write it down. Get to the core. Spend time on decisions, not information transfer.

Try the experiment. Three meetings. Track the split.

A small request: I want this to reach more people. If you found this useful, please share it—forward this email or use the social media icons.

And please comment. Your questions and comments give me fuel to keep going. Without them, I feel like I'm talking into a blank space.

If you're busy, use the "Listen to it" option—it reads the newsletter aloud for you on web and in email.

Not the only way. Probably not even the best way. Just one practitioner's version that worked.

What's your meeting tax rate? Let me know in comments.

~Discovering Turiya@work@life