Meetings, meetings culture, and the deep life: lessons from Zapier's no-meeting week

Executive overview

Knowledge workers spend up to 50% of their week in meetings, yet most of that time produces less than async alternatives. Zapier ran a one-week experiment cancelling all internal meetings — and 80% of staff wanted to do it again. The problem is not that people lack the will to change; it is that unstructured, ad hoc communication is a low-energy default that organisations naturally collapse toward.

Structured collaboration processes beat ad hoc meetings, but only if you build them deliberately and maintain them with sustained organisational energy.

What Zapier's no-meeting week revealed

• 80% of respondents achieved their goals; 89% found communication as effective as usual
• Managers spending 20+ hours per week in meetings regained time for deep thinking and long-term strategy
• The toll of meetings is not just lost hours — fragmentation destroys any chance of extended focus
• Workers given free time struggled to use it well, revealing how meeting culture erodes the skill of self-directed work
• The experiment worked because it was temporary; sustaining it would require ongoing top-down energy and new structures

Three principles for reducing meetings

• Structured collaboration processes: define how information moves and how decisions are made for every recurring interaction — don't default to "we'll just get on Zoom"
• Office hours as a catchall: post a fixed daily window where you are reachable in real time; defer ad hoc requests there instead of letting them become email chains or impromptu meetings
• Reverse meetings over standard meetings: instead of gathering five people in a room, visit each one-on-one; you extract more nuanced insight, eliminate crowd dynamics, and add nothing to anyone's calendar

On digital minimalism and analog alternatives (with David Sacks)

• Stripped-down phones (e.g. Light Phone) are more effective than "dumbed-down" smartphones because the design of a regular phone still pulls you in
• Once people genuinely disconnect from social platforms, they rarely miss them — digital is a moderate behavioural addiction: present and you'll use it, absent and you're largely fine
• The phone foyer method — charger by the front door, phone stays there at home — removes the temptation without requiring a new device
• To find high-quality analog replacements, start with what you already enjoy digitally and find the real-world equivalent that addresses the same underlying human desire (competition, socialising, creativity)

On building a writing career

• Financial reward from freelancing and books is unsteady; speaking income becomes essential as magazine fees collapse
• Develop a clear niche through journalism before pitching a book — give editors a coherent thread that explains why you are the person to write this
• The alternative path: have another career first, then write from lived experience
• Commercial success in nonfiction is largely outside the writer's control; following what genuinely interests you is the only sustainable strategy

On planning and productivity

• Weekly plans should reflect what you will actually do, not a wish list — carrying aspirational tasks produces stress without output
• Focus each week on one or two projects rather than spreading effort across many; completion times rarely suffer and quality rises
• Deep work rituals reduce resistance to starting; if a ritual (like listening to a podcast) gets you over the threshold, modify rather than discard it, then turn it off once momentum builds
• Multi-scale planning (quarterly → weekly → daily) should match your work's natural cycle; a two-week sprint cadence is fine, monthly plans are too broad to be actionable

On over-employment and career design

• The over-employment movement (holding two remote jobs simultaneously) is one tool among many — useful only when deployed toward a clear financial or lifestyle goal
• Haphazard radical career shifts driven by vague dissatisfaction rarely produce the life you actually want
• Use values-based, lifestyle-centred career planning: define the life you want in concrete terms, then choose the professional tools that build toward it
• A new child often resets what resonates — revisit your values before deciding whether to start a side business, take a second job, or simply reclaim time