Benchmarks

The honest summary: one credible study of 76 large companies found that introducing no-meeting days improved autonomy, communication and satisfaction and reduced stress and micromanagement, with the best results at three days a week rather than one. It is a survey of companies that chose to do it, measured largely through pulse surveys, with no control group described. That is a real finding and a weak one, and almost everything written about the no meeting day overstates it. ...

Advice about declining meetings is almost always written by someone with an interest in you declining more of them. That is not a conspiracy; it is just that the people producing the advice are mostly selling calendar software, and their post has to end at a signup button rather than at a complication. ...

How many meetings is too many is a question that wants a number back. Something like “more than fifteen hours a week”, so you can hold your calendar up against it and be told you are right. The number does not exist. Not in a form you should quote, and not in a form that would help you if it did. ...

You already know the week is wrong. That is not the problem. The problem is that when someone asks you to justify changing it, “I have too many meetings” is not an argument — it is a mood, and moods lose to a manager who has a roadmap. ...