There is no shortage of productivity hacks, especially for engineers. In his essay, Paul Graham argues for one you’ve probably heard of: cut back on meetings for developers. Seems like a no-brainer right? In this post we will explore how that measures up to expectations.
“For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.” — Graham
At Bread engineering, we put this hack to the test. For almost a year now, we have enjoyed No Meeting Day every week. If you looked on any engineer’s calendar on Tuesday, they have a giant block from 10–6PM titled No Meeting Day. There it is: no other ceremony, just a simple calendar block. We’ve been enjoying this day for almost a year now and I became curious if this low maintenance productivity hack made us a more effective department.
I proceeded to dig into the most obvious and straightforward indicators at my disposal.
- Number of commits on No Meeting Day vs other days — no significant difference
- Number of releases on No Meeting Day vs other days — slight increase on Wednesday (day after No Meeting Tuesday)
- Number of lines changed on No Meeting Day vs other days — no significant difference
- Slack activity on No Meeting Day vs other days — no significant difference
Even if these metrics were naive, I was surprised to discover — I couldn’t find anything concrete that showed a boost in the engineering team’s performance.
I was disappointed. How could this be? Surely we were writing more code when I didn’t have any meetings to attend. Why else would the team bristle when I try to sneak in even a 5 minute sync on No Meeting Day? I could name at least 10 other companies that have instituted No Meeting Day too. Determined to find the benefits of No Meeting Day, I got qualitative. I sent out a short survey to understand the team better, and here is what I found.
Note: Engineering managers are encouraged to participate in No Meeting Day.
Are you less stressed on No Meeting Days?
Do you want more No Meeting Days
On a scale of 1–4, how productive are you on No Meeting Day?
Whether you are a manager or IC, it’s certainly clear that people feel less stressed and more productive. Does less stress mean more productivity or vice versa? Possibly. One thing is for sure: managers can find relief, even for one day, where they can actually get an uninterrupted block of time to code something. On the flip side, ICs enjoy this perk because for one day, there is one less culprit for context switching. Then, I finally understood the true benefit after reading over the survey comments. No Meeting Day has conditioned the organization to be more mindful about when and how meetings are scheduled.
“ I think it (No meeting day) sets a standard and expectation that we care about meetings and respect each others’ time.”
Maybe the existence of No Meeting Day is a gentle reminder that we should only meet if it unblocks something. Perhaps the reason why we can’t find the exact lift in performance day over day is because it improves our quality of life over all, over time.
“I’m always trying to remove these little mental “barbs” that stack up to steal our attention and add anxiety, and no meeting day removes a lot of them. Isn’t that the essence of a good cultural benefit? Something that, put simply, makes one’s life easier?”
Have other companies found concrete evidence of productivity? While I wasn’t able to find exactly what I was looking for, it was clear from talking with the team that No Meeting Day was one of the most cherished cultural perks at the company. From my perspective, if it makes the team happier at such low cost — I say we keep it and continue to reinforce what this day stands for: be thoughtful and frugal about meetings.
“We’ve had many other cultural efforts that did not feel like they “stuck,” whereas no meeting day required absolutely no effort whatsoever. It just worked. I wonder if this isn’t sort of the essence of culture”
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