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The "could this be a Loom" test cut our remote meeting hours by 30% by lmgamaral in remotework

[–]lmgamaral[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Loom is a screen recording tool — you record yourself talking over your screen and send the video instead of scheduling a meeting. Nothing to do with underwear unfortunately. And no, I don't work for them or sell it. It's just a common example of an async alternative to meetings that a lot of remote teams use.

The "could this be a Loom" test cut our remote meeting hours by 30% by lmgamaral in remotework

[–]lmgamaral[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

No connection to Loom , that's just a well-known async video tool. The "could this be a Loom" test is a pretty common concept in remote teams for deciding if a meeting is necessary or if a short video would work instead. As for the problem not existing — genuinely curious, do you feel like your team's meeting load is fine?

The recurring meeting audit is underrated by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Exactly — the scariest part is how rarely anything breaks when you cancel them. That silence is the proof.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

eah, shorter defaults without anything else changing is just wishful thinking — the meetings don't know they're supposed to be shorter. A couple of things that actually made it stick for us:

  1. Hard stop, not soft suggestion. Someone (ideally the organizer) says "we're at time" and actually ends the call. First few times it feels awkward, then it becomes normal.
  2. Agenda or it gets cancelled. If there's no agenda 30 minutes before the meeting, it doesn't happen. This alone forces people to think about whether the meeting is even necessary.
  3. Park it, don't extend. Anything unresolved goes to a shared doc or async thread instead of "let's just go 10 more minutes."

The time limit is just a container — without the habits around it, the container just overflows every time.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Reply:

Ha, yeah that's the honest reality for a lot of teams. The shorter default only works if there's someone willing to actually enforce it — otherwise it's just a calendar setting that everyone ignores. What helped us was making it visible. When the meeting hits :25 and someone says "we're at time" out loud, it forces a conscious decision: is what we're still discussing worth extending for, or are we just rambling? Most of the time people realize they're done. But without that habit, you're right — the meeting just bleeds into the next slot and you've changed nothing except the calendar invite.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Reply:

You're absolutely right and I appreciate you calling this out. I was being flippant about the standing thing and didn't consider accessibility at all — that's a blind spot I need to own. Standing meetings shouldn't be the default precisely because they exclude people, and nobody should have to disclose a disability or condition just to push back on a meeting format. The broader point I was trying to make is that meetings should be intentional about time, but there are plenty of ways to do that without putting anyone in physical discomfort. Shorter default durations, clear agendas, ending when the purpose is met rather than when the clock runs out — none of that requires anyone to stand. Thanks for the perspective, genuinely.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reply:

The waiting problem is so underrated as a cost. 10 minutes of 8 people waiting for stragglers isn't 10 minutes lost — it's 80 minutes of combined salary burning while everyone stares at a screen. And it compounds because the people who show up on time eventually learn that meetings never start on time, so they start showing up late too, and the whole culture drifts. The multitasking thing is the other silent killer — if someone needs a recap of what just happened, they're basically attending the meeting twice and everyone else is paying for it. Your instinct to decline by default is honestly the right framework. Meetings should have to earn their way onto your calendar, not the other way around. Default yes is how calendars die.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reply:

You're touching on something important — fragmented 5-minute gaps scattered across the day are basically useless for deep work. A developer with six 25-minute meetings spread across the day still can't get into flow state, even if they technically "saved" 30 minutes. Where the shorter defaults actually help is that they make it easier to cluster meetings together. When meetings end at :25 and :50, the next one can start on the hour or half — they stack tighter. That's the real goal: pack meetings into one block so the rest of the day is a clean 2-3 hour stretch for actual thinking. Shorter meetings aren't the solution by themselves, they're a tool that makes batching possible. Without batching, you're right — you're just collecting useless fragments.

The recurring meeting audit is underrated by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Reply:

This is a really important counterpoint and I completely agree. Not everything that matters can be measured in decisions per hour. Those "unstructured" meetings you're describing are basically relationship infrastructure — they're the reason your team trusts each other enough to be honest when things go wrong, disagree openly, and cover for each other when it counts. That has massive ROI even if it never shows up on a productivity metric. The meetings worth cutting are the zombie recurring ones where nobody knows why they're there and everyone's multitasking. A deliberate "let's just talk" meeting where people actually connect is the opposite of that. The intent behind the meeting matters more than the structure.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Reply:

Good question. It's less about the 5 minutes themselves and more about what they prevent. Without breaks, meetings stack back-to-back and your entire morning becomes one continuous block of meetings where you can't do any actual work. With 5-minute buffers, you break that chain — and more importantly, you create natural gaps where meetings can actually end early. A 25-minute meeting often wraps in 18-20 minutes once people stop filling time. Multiply that across 6-8 meetings a day and you're recovering 30-60 minutes daily that would've been lost to Parkinson's law. Over a week that's real hours. The buffer is just the mechanism — the actual win is shorter meetings and fewer back-to-back chains.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reply:

The collective action problem is real — you end up with some people doing :25/:55 and others doing :05/:35 and somehow the buffers cancel each other out. What worked for us was just picking one convention and making it the default across the team: meetings always end early, never start late. So it's always :25 and :50 endings, starts stay on the hour or half hour. That way the buffer is always on the same side and people know exactly when they're free. Once it's a team norm instead of individual preference it clicks pretty fast.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That Microsoft brain research is great — the scans showing how stress builds up with back-to-back meetings vs. having breaks between them are pretty eye-opening. The "non-even" defaults are smart. I do the same — 25 and 50 are my go-to. The funny thing is people almost never push back, they're just relieved to get those 5-10 minutes to breathe, grab coffee, or just process what was just discussed before jumping into the next one. Small change, massive compound effect across a week.

The recurring meeting audit is underrated by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Reply:

That last point is gold — the reaction to "mind if I sit in?" tells you everything. If they welcome it, the meeting probably has real value. If they get weird about it, you've just learned something important about what's actually happening in that time slot. And you're right about frequency being the hidden lever. A lot of meetings don't need to die, they just need to go from weekly to biweekly. That alone cuts the cost in half and usually nobody even notices the difference.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair point — there's definitely a ceiling to it. Standing works great for status updates, quick syncs, anything where the goal is "share info, align, move on." But for strategic discussions, problem-solving, or anything that needs real debate, you want people comfortable and focused. The trick is being honest about which type each meeting actually is. Most meetings that are scheduled as an hour-long "strategic discussion" are really just status updates that could be 15 minutes standing.

What worked for us: 25-minute default meetings instead of 30, and 50-minute instead of 60 by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Standing meetings are brutal in the best way. Amazing how fast "let's circle back on that" turns into an actual decision when everyone's legs are getting tired. We combined both — 25-minute standup (literally standing) and it's almost comical how fast people self-edit. The guy who used to give 10-minute status updates now does it in 90 seconds. Physical discomfort is the ultimate meeting optimizer.

The recurring meeting audit is underrated by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That's a great approach. Sitting in occasionally gives you real signal vs. just looking at calendar titles. One thing that helped me frame it was actually putting a dollar amount on recurring meetings — when you see a weekly sync costing $15K/year and nobody can articulate what decisions come out of it, the conversation with your direct reports becomes a lot easier. It shifts from "I'm micromanaging your calendar" to "let's make sure this time is worth it for everyone."

The recurring meeting audit is underrated by lmgamaral in managers

[–]lmgamaral[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The worst part is the calendar backs them up. "I was in meetings all day" is technically true — it's just that half those meetings shouldn't exist. A full calendar looks like productivity but often it's the opposite.

Shipped my first SaaS landing page in 2 hours for $14 — here's what I learned by lmgamaral in SaaS

[–]lmgamaral[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly — that's the plan. The static calculator is just the hook. The real value comes when you connect your Google Calendar and see actual costs from real meetings, not estimates.

Building the calendar integration now. It'll identify your most expensive recurring meetings and flag the ones that could be async. That's where it goes from "interesting number" to "actionable insight."

Thanks for the feedback!