A company decided to pass on a new rule: no more meetings before noon, though some were skeptical, it worked out: ‘Turns out a lot of "quick syncs" existed because they were easy to schedule, not because they were needed.’

María Cetra • Writer

Jul 25, 2026 1:00 PM EDT

Sometimes a simple office rule can change the course of the company entirely.

We are so used to maintaining things in our jobs that we aren't looking for ways to improve. We are used to having a meeting every Wednesday at 11 a.m. to discuss goals. Is the meeting necessary? Does it need to happen every week? Should it be an hour long? Nobody knows or cares. We just assume that if we have it, we need it. Someday, someone starts looking into the company's productivity and realizes that every Wednesday we see a decrease in work getting done. Before 11 am people do almost nothing because they are preparing for the meeting. At 11, they get the one-hour meeting. After it, they just do almost nothing till lunchtime. So the one-hour meeting ends up being a load of doing nothing during the whole day just for one meeting.

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We were drowning in meetings. Standup at 9, syncs at 10 and 11, half the team never had a clear morning. Someone finally proposed a rule as an experiment. No internal meetings before noon, full stop, for a month. I was skeptical, figured we'd just cram the same meetings into the afternoon. What actually happened is a bunch of them just d d. Turns out a lot of "quick syncs" existed because they were

*A man standing in front of people sitting at a table with a laptop, taking notes.*
*_{Representation.}*

That is just an example, as it is the morning meetings in the story below. They are hard proof of the waste that some meetings are. They aren’t really necessary, but nobody wants to be the one eliminating them. Everything is scheduled around meetings that don’t provide any real value to the company or the workspace. So why do we have them? Why wouldn’t we eliminate them?

easy to schedule, not because they were needed. When the morning was protected people started dropping questions in threads and most got answered without a call at all. The mornings became the block where actual work happened. By the second week eng was shipping noticeably more and the whole vibe was calmer. We measured it loosely, cycle time on tickets dropped, I won't pretend it was scientific but it was obvious

enough. The part that surprised me is nobody wanted to go back. We made it permanent. Afternoons are for the calls that actually need to be calls, mornings are yours. If your remote days feel like meeting sandwiches with 20 minutes of work between them, a protected block might do more than any productivity app.

Maybe that is what companies should be focusing on: productivity. They are the first to notice if an employee takes too many breaks or stands up from their desk every two hours for a coffee. But they never realize that the productivity issue is actually not a matter of a bathroom break. Instead, the real problem is the useless meeting they schedule for no real reason and to make the day revolve only around that.

*Coworkers sitting around a table having a meeting, model image.*

DonEscaped Texas this meeting could have been an email

Stacysensei You must work at a company where the average age skews young. I could never see most older executives agreeing to this regardless of data.

klamaire I plan to test this out myself. Nothing ruins a morning faster than having a 9am meeting when you came to work planning to work on a project. Meetings destroy the momentum.

justathought1654 Would be awesome to try if my company allowed it. My concentration goes out the door with just a little time in between to do something. Feels icky to sit around all day talking about what needs to get done and not have the time to execute.

owl-sista I'd prefer meeting until 12 (so offshore can be involved) and blocked off afternoon for deep concentration work. Also I have an Urgent Meetings only policy for Fridays. It's just my policy and I block my calendar and most of my colleagues respect the blocked off day.

Ozon My best weeks at job is when I have 1-2 good meetings pr week. I actually have time to do my job and we don't need more meetings to keep my and the departments production going strong.

ZenfulJedi Last time I was a manager, my rule was meetings could only be on Wednesdays. The team's productivity quadrupled. Every meeting had an agenda, do outs, and people came prepared.

Chronza How can any work get done if the higher ups don't have meetings asking for updates on where all the work is at?

pwnageface My favorite every morning was "stand up" meant to be 10-15 minutes, hence where the name comes from. Every effing day they turned into over an hour and a half because our director couldn't shut his mouth. Always shocked we hadnt finished xyz... breh. Stfu and notice productivity increases! Good for you!!

talexbatreddit OMG this would have been awesome. The daily 10am meeting was such a downer way to start the day. I usually started at 930am, and that first half hour was not terribly productive because I knew that the 10am meeting was coming up. Moving that to the afternoon would have been lovely. Also, making it at 15 minute meeting would have made more sense. But they laid me off, so I don't care any more. :D

bekarooo I'm at my most productive in the morning/first half of the day, it's when my brain is firing on all cylinders haha. Client meetings in the morning make sense too. By the time 2pm hits it's foggier than San Francisco in my head. I could still manage internal meetings though.

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A company decided to pass on a new rule: no more meetings before noon, though some were skeptical, it worked out: ‘Turns out a lot of "quick syncs" existed because they were easy to schedule, not because they were needed.’

Sometimes a simple office rule can change the course of the company entirely.

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