MeetingCostThe calm calculator
Start a meeting
The cost calculator · v2

Run fewer,
shorter, more valuable meetings.

Every meeting is paid for twice — once in salary, and once in the work it replaces. This is the calculator and the case for using it.

Quick read
  • 71%
    of senior managers say their meetings are unproductive and inefficient.HBR 2017
  • 15%
    of company-wide time goes to meetings — more for executives.HBR / Bain 2014
  • +252%
    weekly meeting time per user, Feb 2020 – Feb 2022.Microsoft WTI 2022
Every number links to its primary source. See the audit for what we’ve stopped citing (including the “$37B” number).
Step 01

Describe the meeting

Participants
People in the room, on the call, or half-listening in a tab.
Avg hourly rate
Fully-loaded cost per person.
$/hr
Duration
How long it's scheduled for — not always how long it runs.
min
Cadence
Recurring meetings are where the real bleeding happens.

Include opportunity cost

On

The work that isn't happening because the meeting is. Senior and creative roles carry much higher opportunity cost than their hourly rate suggests.

Who’s in the room?

Loaded cost incl. benefits + overhead.

This meeting costs
6 people × $90/hr × 45 min
calculating
$607.5
Time cost
$405
Opportunity cost
$202.5
If this repeats weekly, it costs
52 meetings / year
$31,590
That’s $5,265 per attendee per year — roughly 0.32 full-time hires at $100k.
Reading the shape
watchRecurring weekly over 30 min compounds fast. Consider async updates between live check-ins.
Start the meeting
Framework · 01

Before the meeting, ask five questions.

Not every calendar invite deserves to be accepted. Work through these before clicking yes — and before sending.

Q · 01
Is there a decision to make?
Meetings are for deciding. Updates belong in a doc.
Q · 02
Does this need synchrony?
If the conversation can happen in async threads, it should.
Q · 03
Who is strictly required?
Invite the smallest group that still makes the decision real.
Q · 04
What's the cheapest format?
15 min + two people > 60 min + ten. Always.
Q · 05
What's the outcome artifact?
A doc, a decision, an action list. If nothing ships, nothing happened.
Research · 02

The case for measuring what meetings cost

Three data points we keep coming back to. Each one should change something about how you schedule.

64%
of meetings cost the company more than they produce.
HBR, 2017 — “Stop the Meeting Madness”
15%
of collective company time is spent in meetings; this doubles at the executive level.
Bain & Company, analysis of 17 large firms
2.5×
productivity cost multiplier for a deep-work role interrupted by a meeting.
Gloria Mark, UC Irvine — task-resumption research

We collected and annotated the best research on meeting cost and productivity. It’s free, cited, and short.

Read the research →
Framework · 03

When not to meet

Most recurring meetings are there because the work couldn't figure out how to happen any other way. Here are cheaper shapes.

Status updates
Written async update, Slack channel, or a Loom
Most meetings
Information sharing
Doc + comment thread with a deadline
All-hands, FYIs
Brainstorming
Silent writing round first, then short live sync
Ideation
Approvals
Async review with explicit sign-off
Design/spec reviews
1:1 updates
Running shared doc; meet only when stuck
Manager 1:1s
Working sessions
Pair on a doc or in code; not on a call with 8 others
Strategy syncs
Note
If your team’s default setting is “let’s have a meeting about it,” try flipping it to “let’s start a doc about it.” The meeting — if you still need one — will be 20 minutes, not 60.
A rule of thumb

If the cost of writing it down is less than the cost of meeting about it — which it almost always is — write it down.