Before Breakfast Make meetings better, with Rebecca Hinds
11 snips
Feb 11, 2026 
Rebecca Hinds, organizational design and collaboration researcher who leads the Work AI Institute and wrote Your Best Meeting Ever. She explains why meetings become a lazy default and when they are truly necessary. She walks through a calendar reset to cut meeting volume, practical calendar audits and the 10-hour weekly benchmark. She also covers giving feedback, adding little delights, and structuring a focused workday.
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Meetings Are A Product
- Meetings are a product that organizations create and rarely optimize.
- They shape decisions, priorities, and culture and deserve intentional design.
Meeting Time Rose Despite Better Tools
- Time spent in meetings rose even as digital tools improved communication.
- Lack of system-level clarity pushed teams back into expensive synchronous meetings.
Reserve Meetings For Synchronous Work
- Use meetings only when you need synchronous collaboration for decisions, complexity, or development.
- Move information exchange to asynchronous channels instead of defaulting to meetings.
