For a long time, I’ve wanted to build a system for meetings that works the following way:

1. At the beginning of every week, all employees get a set number of invite tokens
2. When you schedule a meeting, you have to use a token for each person you invite
3. Following the meeting, each attendee is sent an automated email asking if: they found it useful and if they needed to be there
4. After responses had been collected, the organizer would get a summary and for each positive response, the organizer would get a token back
5. New tokens would be issued at the beginning of every week

I’ve thought this would help train people to both be more precious with people’s time when organizing meetings and also force attendees to reflect on whether they actually need to attend.

Personally, I live by the following rules:

1. I leave a meeting if it turns out I’m not needed
2. I don’t attend a meeting if an agenda isn’t in the invite
3. All meetings need a list of assignable action items/next steps sent out afterwards