So many meetings, so little done. How one CEO is reclaiming his time.

Meetings took over Bob Jordan’s calendar. Now the Southwest Airlines CEO is doing something about it.

He blocks his calendar three afternoons a week to escape the back-to-back meetings that keep him from all-important tasks that only the CEO can handle.

“I think when you first start, it’s easy to confuse busyness and going to meetings with leadership,” Jordan said in a roundtable discussion at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit earlier this month. “I’m trying to in 2026, y’all are going to think I’m crazy, ... to hold the afternoons of Wednesday to Friday completely open.”

“What's it for? It’s so that you can work on things you need to work on, you can think about what’s important right now, you can call people you need to talk to,” Jordan said. "Because what we all find, I'm sure, is that there is no time for 'work' and you confuse going to meetings with the work."

How meetings took over your calendar

Meeting bloat – one-on-ones, all-hands meetings, Zoom and Teams meetings – continues to clog calendars. Unnecessary meetings – those with too many people and no clear objective or that drone on too long, wander off topic, or devolve into gripe sessions – exhaust already over-scheduled workers, sap productivity and top office pet peeves. Workers are most annoyed by meetings that could have been emails or messages, according to SurveyMonkey research.

Managers have tried for years to get control of the runaway meeting train by tightening agendas and shortening sessions. They’ve held standing meetings and walk and talks. They’ve even encouraged people to drink a glass of water beforehand and let nature take its course. But the frequency of meetings that ticked up during the pandemic continues to increase, workplace observers say.

According to Philip Arkcoll, founder of Worklytics, people multitask in more than half of their meeting time and a third of the attendees never speak.

“Meeting hygiene isn’t just a personal productivity preference, it’s an organizational design problem,” Future of Work strategist Stephanie Fraone said in a LinkedIn post. “Meetings are absolutely valuable for alignment, decision-making and human connection. But without intention, structure and standards, they risk crowding out the work they’re meant to support.”

Meetings hijack most productive hours

With hiring freezes and layoffs, many employees are already doing the jobs of multiple people, not to mention fending off the constant pings of messages and other interruptions.

More time spent in meetings leaves even less time for “deep work,” the ability to focus without distractions.

Frequently, the most productive hours of the workday are hijacked by someone else’s agenda, according to Microsoft workplace research.

Half of all meetings take place between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. when circadian rhythms give many people a natural productivity spike. More than half of all meetings are ad hoc calls without a calendar invite, with 1 in 10 meetings scheduled at the last minute.

Flooded by meeting invites, employees say their days grow longer or bleed into weekends because they have to work early or stay late to make progress on tasks that require a higher level of concentration. According to Microsoft, meetings after 8 p.m. are up 16% year over year.

"For many, the workday now feels like navigating chaos − reacting to others’ priorities and losing focus on what matters most," Microsoft's work trend index survey found. "In a time when every hour counts, that drift could quietly drain energy and stall business progress."

4 tips for having great meetings

When Benjamin Laker, a leadership professor at the University of Reading’s Henley Business School, and his colleagues studied the effect of meetings on productivity, they found that employees were 71% more productive when meetings were reduced by 40%.

Not all meetings are bad, Laker says. In fact, they can be essential for collaboration and innovation.

“Meetings can be a great way for teams to come together, exchange ideas and work towards common goals,” Laker told USA TODAY in 2023.

We asked Laker for tips on how to have the right meetings. He said:

Have a purpose for each meeting before scheduling it. Make sure the objectives are clearly defined.

Ask yourself if the information could be communicated in another way, such as an email, a Slack, or a Teams message.

Keep meetings short and focused. Try to schedule meetings for the exact amount of time needed and make sure everyone sticks to the agenda. 

Limit the number of people attending a meeting and only include those who need to be there.