40+ boss quotes (and a video) on the pointlessness of meetings
Updated: Jun 29, 2022
Why are meetings not extinct yet? These quirky quotes ask the same in tongue-in-cheek ways
I hate meetings.
The time spent on them can be channeled towards so many productive purposes—such as, umm, work.
Not to mention, meetings are so drawn out you find yourself instinctively tinkering with your phone time and again under the desk.
Even the protagonist in my book PiKu & ViRu uses a boring meeting to secretly uninstall all her dating apps. (Buy/download, read, and review my book here; it’s FREE on Kindle Unlimited!)
Turns out I’m not the only one who wishes meetings were an email instead.
Some of the greatest thinkers and biggest personalities of our times have had an equal (if not greater) disdain for meetings.
Not all meetings are the same, I understand. But I’ve rarely seen a meeting translate itself into proper, tangible action and results. No wonder I find them so pointless.
To prove my point, I’ve cherry-picked 40+ epic quotes on the utter futility of meetings.
Read until the end because there’s a cool satirical video on meetings by master storyteller Jaspal Bhatti from his iconic sitcom Flop Show. Prepare to ROFL!
“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.” —Dave Barry
“Congratulations on demonstrating your importance by turning a non-issue into a two-hour staff meeting.” ―Anonymous
“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” ―Thomas Sowell
“Most meetings are social street lamps that attract the unproductive moths in an organization.” ―Anonymous
“A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.” ―Anonymous
“Feel useless? Organize a meeting. Show off your charts. Waste everyone’s time. Start late.” ―Anonymous
“Walk out of a meeting … as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value … It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.” ―Elon Musk
“Always hated the sight of five, six grown men sitting around a table, doing nothing but work their jaw.” ―Annie Proulx
“Actions speak louder than meetings.” ―Lee Clow
“Master the art of refusal and avoiding meetings.” ―Tim Ferriss
“Meetings move at the speed of the slowest mind in the room.” —Dale Dauton
“The only thing I hate more than meetings is the work the meetings get me out of.” —Anonymous
“The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.” ―Thomas Sewell
“Let’s have a staff meeting and discuss the things that must happen but will never actually end up happening.” ―Anonymous
“Meetings: the practical alternative to work.” ―Anonymous
“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” —John Kenneth Galbraith
“One either meets or one works.” —Peter Drucker
“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings’.” ―Dave Barry
“Has anyone ever said, ‘I wish I could go to more meetings today’?” —Matt Mullenweg
“Meetings should have a button you secretly press and if everyone presses the button the meeting suddenly ends.” ―Anonymous
“Our meetings would go much faster if no one spoke.” ―Anonymous
“Employees hate meetings because they reveal that self-promotion, sycophancy, dissimulation and constantly talking nonsense in a loud confident voice are more impressive than merely being good at the job—and it is depressing to lack these skills but even more depressing to discover one’s self using them.” ―Michael Foley
“A meeting is a collective tacit confession of participants’ unwillingness to work.” ―Pawan Mishra
“Meetings: They often include at least one moron who inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense.” ―David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
“Your meeting is a high priority if there’s free food.” ―Anonymous
“Time bandits come at all hours, wanting conversations, wasting conversations, wanting meetings, wasting meetings, and all with no purpose.” —Brandon Webb
“The longer the meeting, the less is accomplished.” —Tim Cook
“We need to have a meeting to discuss how productivity is suffering because we are always attending meetings.” ―Anonymous
“You said to start my presentation with a joke, so I showed them my paycheque.” ―Randy Glasbergen
“A meeting consists of a group of people who have little to say—until after the meeting.” ―PK Shaw
“Any simple problem can be made worse if enough meetings are held to discuss it.” ―Anonymous
“The only way you’re going to get me for a meeting is if you’re writing me a check.” ―Mark Cuban
“Sometimes, I spend whole meetings wondering how they got the big meeting table through the door.” ―Anonymous
“The only summit meeting that can succeed is the one that does not take place.” —Barry M. Goldwater
“Thank you for voicing that terrible idea and making this meeting last even longer.” ―Anonymous
“Most people doubt online meetings can work but they somehow overlook that most in-person meetings don’t work either.” ―Scott Berkun
“My sleep problems would go away if office meetings took place in my bed.” ―Anonymous
“If you are not part of the solution, you are part of this meeting.” ―Anonymous
“How cost-effective is it to make us stop working to attend a boring meeting where they bitch at us for not getting our work done?” ―Anonymous
“If you can go a week without meetings, you can go a month.” ―Anonymous
“Meetings are toxic.”―David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
And now, time for the video, as promised: