Should we end meetings forever?
Meetings have taken over. It is time for a revolution. Right?
Join Dan Toomey and the Good Work Investigative News Team as we dig into our most earth-shattering corporate provocation yet: should we end meetings forever?
Thanks to Derek Thompson and Erik Shewalter for donning the spiritual trench coat with us.
Follow Derek: https://twitter.com/DKThomp
Video by Dan Toomey and Henry Stockwell
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Should we end meetings forever?
@GoodWorkMB
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
What kind of topics should we do next??
@sam_boh
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
[3:43] I think we're getting (or, I guess since I'm 2 years late to this, I should say we've gotten) to the crux of GameStop's issues if they're holding meetings upwards of 10 times a day because they need help making decisions.
@LvrRtdgr
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
PLEASE. Unless they ever become worth the time. So IOW, YES.
@flyingiguana409
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
we need to have a meeting about ending meetings
@MichaelMarquez-m3b
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Management called meetings actually slow down progress on a task. I find the people who call these meetings and pop up to make cameo appearances in them are people who don’t really seem to have much to do themselves during the workday so they seem to need to interrupt the people who are actually busy trying to get the actual work done.
@kellala62
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
time travelling?? wanna ask this 🤣
@rhiclay4696
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
This captures how I feel about training for my new job right now. The trainer tends to ramble on without making much sense, goes off on tangents, and generally wastes the team's time. Half of the training is totally pointless and useless, while the other half actually provides some useful info. I mean, we’re all getting paid, right? Still, I’d happily clock out and take a pay cut just to avoid having my time wasted and to reclaim the countless hours of my life lost due to this trainer's "personal issues" and incompetence. I’ve had numerous chats with other team members who are just as frustrated with this trainer and the time we’re losing. All of the training is held via Zoom meetings. It’s almost funny at this point because of the secondhand embarrassment I feel for her. I’ve got two more weeks of training with this lady. Lord help me. 🙄
@yashwinbopanna9103
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I'm watching this 20 minutes' before a meeting. Wish me luck!
@Stoufferguy
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Dasvidaniya comrade. See you at the meeting.
@SofaKingShit
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
When he said mental health crisis l punched the air and said yeah.
@indefensible0301
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
My school club held a 5-hour-long meeting to summerize a season.
@richacello339
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Ironically, journalism is the profession which has the fewest meetings, because 1) you won't be in the office, because you're doing journalism and 2) you're on deadline. The People magazine story meetings in LA should have been turned into a sitcom as freelancers pitch ideas to editors who have already heard it all before.
@debl9957
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I hope Toomey stays online instead of heading over to legacy media.
@user-fn4jl3uk2s
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
My company has meetings all day every day. They always discuss future meetings during the meeting 🙃🙃🙃🙃
@aandwdabest
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Should we end meetings forever?
Yes.
@davidy22
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Would you call the video call you had with derek a meeting?
@maxmj2706
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I have the same haircut
@AdmiralBonetoPick
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I'm required to have a weekly project status meeting with a bunch of my colleagues. They appreciate how I usually get through everything in about 6 minutes and then they can get back on with their work.
@AdmiralBonetoPick
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
0:40 Okay that got a laugh from me.
@danielsmith5032
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Funny thing is NPR probably held a meeting to come up with this video idea 😂😂
@danielsmith5032
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
The first few statements are lacking 😂
Of course meetings tripled between 2020 and 2022. That was the height of Covid and everyone working from home. The lack of in person, gatherings and walk-by impromptu discussions led to more discussions via software.
And the statement “that’s 1 hour of productivity and seven hours not” is erroneous. The data said it was eight hours per week in meetings, not eight hours per day.
@IllIl
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I cancelled a meeting so that I could watch this video.
@EdwardianRainbow
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
The meetings we have wouldnt be all that bad if my director didnt deviate from the subject so much. A 30 minute meeting can turn into an hour because she wants to have some weird discussion about T-Shirts.
@BradyReese
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
But his collar is black…
@IIIllllIIIIlllll
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I have a standing weekly Fri 10:30a meeting with 2 others (one I manage, the other I dont) which sometimes goes 2-3 hours. But easily 80% of that meeting is non work related
@MoviesAndHeists
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
3:11 What do you mean "paid to hang out with your friends"?
These people aren't my friends
My friends are the people I hang out with after work
@Middleground_Opinion
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Not against meetings at all.
What I am against are meetings that could have easily been a quick email or teams message that turn in 15-30mins of literal word filler speeches.
@20storiesunder
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
THe zoom call noises genuinely upset me, I thought someone was calling me at work.
@WarmandHardy
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Meetings pass blame, poor forecasting and higher ups are going to do what they want (regardless of your input.) Meetings don’t matter.
@john.minelli
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Got a little too excited at the end.
@KixMusaid
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
i love meetings because then i don’t have to work and just sit in a room and do nothing
@gustavalexander8676
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Erik shelwalter just outed himself as a parasocial who has no actual friends but just people who is forced to interact with him at work. Newsflash; they're not there because they like you. They need to get paid.
@tamasmihaly1
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I don’t even care about business… just here for the crazy.
@dave24-73
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
If you need lots of meeting to solve problems, maybe you are in the wrong job.
@alexhiatt3374
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
i really want to see an uncut version of all the separate script reads
@fallenshallrise
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I like to do the "meeting math". In a 1 hour check-in with 40 people invited you have to minus 5 minutes for everyone to join and for small-talk, minus 10 minutes for set-up from whoever is hosting the meeting, minus 10 minutes more for the other manager to repeat everything the other guy said, then you need 5 minutes at the end to wrap up. In a perfect world that only leaves around 45 seconds per person of speaking time if you want people at the meeting to actually answer questions or contribute anything.
@fallenshallrise
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
Project Managers could just CLEARLY tell people what they need done and what the deadline is. Then if they miss 2 deadlines in a row you can start talking about having "stand-ups" and "check-ins". The more hand-holding you do the more people are just going to not bother managing their own time and will just sit around doing nothing until someone tells them step-by-step what to do next.
@jay5.77
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
My meeting is my boss frantically telling my how to wire something then leaving for 3 hours
@aserr
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
haha meat-ing
@aserr
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
the word sounds weird now
@davimelo9181
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
6:46
Send to your corporate friends, if you can still call them that
@DrBdan8
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
I haven't watched the video yet but yes, god yes
@anne-zh2kd
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
"It's not just affixing the same steering wheel to the same Model T" Yeah, something that actually matters if you do right or not
@tticusFinch
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
So I'm in a company that's very meeting-heavy. Here's my perspective:
1) people receive too many emails every day
1a) people don't read their emails
1b) people that do read emails scan them, thereby missing key information
2) people are included on projects that shouldn't be included
3) projects have too many people in them
4) people block out their calendars with fake meetings to get work done
I used to be the person who sent the email instead of having a meeting. But because of items 1, 1a, 1b I would either never get a reply or get a reply with a question that would have been answered had they read the email in its entirety. This is very frustrating and meetings in this case is simply blocking out time for a briefing and Q&A, plus whatever the ask is.
Unfortunately, this quickly inflates when you need to talk to more than one person. Again, this could be an email with, say, four recipients but then you run into items 1, 1a, and 1b, plus everyone then assumes the other person will reply back which usually results in no reply at all. In which case you set a meeting. However, because of all the listed items, calendars rarely line up until 1-3 weeks out.
And there are those who either will not or can not work on a project unless you schedule time for a "working meeting".
As for those who might argue that you just do the work yourself, I literally cannot. Everyone has specialized knowledge or access or abilities that I could not do my work in isolation.
I don't have a whole lot of actual output in my position. I attend and make a lot of meetings because that's how things inch forward.
And let's not talk about office politics.
@michaelchen2718
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
6:20 girl in top left name?
@michaelchen2718
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
1:47 his face HAHAH
@ty_teynium
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
1:06
Love people; hate meetings
Love meeting people.
Hate people meetings,
But love meetings with people.
But can tolerate people of meetings
@tandemdwarf745
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
This video was made exactly one year before an even more devastating Drake joke could have been written
@thepandadiaries
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 am
a really small detail that I love, whether or not it was intentional, is 4 participants in the Teams overlay. It could have been easily overlooked but hey, there were indeed 4 people in the meeting!
Comments are closed.