Three Hours?! Is This a Meeting or a Marriage? 💒

Who schedules a three-hour meeting? Seriously. I have questions.

Because somewhere out there, a person looked at a calendar, saw an empty three-hour block, and thought, “Perfect. Let’s put a meeting there.” Three hours. That is not a meeting. That is a commitment.

Three hours is long enough to drive to another city, have lunch, come back, and still have time to wonder why you went in the first place. Three hours is enough time to watch a movie. It is enough time to start a load of laundry, forget about it, remember it two hours later, and then move it to the dryer while questioning every decision that brought you to that moment. But apparently, it is also an acceptable amount of time to sit in a meeting.

I understand that some things require discussion. There are complicated projects. Big decisions. Planning sessions. Important topics. Fine. I will give you that. But three hours? What exactly are we doing in there? Are we solving world hunger? Are we negotiating a peace treaty? Are we rebuilding civilization from scratch? Because if we're reviewing a PowerPoint presentation that could have been an email, I am going to need some answers.

I think the problem starts with the calendar invite. Someone types in the title. Maybe something innocent like “Project Discussion.” Then they look at their calendar and realize they have a three-hour opening. And instead of thinking, “Wow, that's a long time. Surely we don't need all of that,” they think, “Excellent. We can use the whole thing.”

No.

That's not how time works.

You don't get bonus points for using the entire calendar block.

A meeting should have a natural expiration point. There should be a moment when someone looks around the room and says, “Okay, I think we've covered everything.” And then everybody gets to leave.

Instead, somehow meetings have evolved into endurance competitions.

The first thirty minutes are usually pretty productive. People are engaged. Everyone is paying attention. Notes are being taken. Things are happening. An hour in, we're still hanging in there. Ninety minutes in, somebody says, “Let's take a quick five-minute break.”

At that point, nobody believes the break will be five minutes.

We're adults. We know how this works.

Someone gets coffee. Someone checks their email. Someone stares blankly at a wall. Someone quietly Googles “how long is too long for a meeting?” And then we come back.

Two hours.

Now we're entering a completely different phase of the meeting.

People aren't listening anymore. They're physically present but spiritually somewhere else. Someone is nodding while thinking about dinner. Someone else is pretending to take notes but is actually making a grocery list. Another person has perfected the art of looking directly at the screen while mentally leaving the building.

And then there's always that one person who says, “Before we wrap up…”

No.

Don't.

Please don't.

We have been here since the previous geological period.

There is nothing left to wrap up.

At three hours, I don't even know what we are anymore. Are we coworkers? Are we colleagues? Are we survivors? Should somebody come around and give us little stickers that say, “I Survived the Three-Hour Meeting”?

Honestly, I would wear one.

And let's talk about the phrase “This will just be a quick meeting.” That phrase has lost all meaning.

A quick meeting can apparently be anywhere from fifteen minutes to half a workday. It's like saying, “I'm just going to run into Target for one thing.”

We all know that's a lie.

You will emerge three hours later with a seasonal candle, a storage container you didn't need, and absolutely no memory of what happened.

Meetings are the same way.

You go in thinking you'll be done by 10:00. Suddenly it's 11:47 and someone is discussing a spreadsheet tab that nobody knew existed.

At some point, we need to ask ourselves whether the meeting is actually accomplishing something or whether we are simply meeting because the calendar told us to.

Because here's a revolutionary idea: If the topic takes thirty minutes, schedule thirty minutes. If it takes an hour, schedule an hour. If you genuinely need three hours, fine. But I want you to look me directly in the eye and explain why.

And if your answer is, “Well, we might need the extra time,” I have news for you.

You probably don't.

Three-hour meetings should require a permit.

There should be an approval process. You should have to submit documentation explaining why this meeting cannot be accomplished in sixty minutes or less. Perhaps there should even be a committee.

Although, now that I think about it, that committee would probably schedule a three-hour meeting to discuss the permit process.

And that, my friends, is how civilization collapses.

So the next time you receive a calendar invitation for a three-hour meeting, don't panic. Just remember that somewhere, someone made a conscious decision that this was a reasonable use of three hours of multiple people's lives.

And apparently, nobody stopped them.

Frankly, that's the part I find most concerning.

Who is this person?

And more importantly…

Can I please have their calendar?