Rule 13 of 33 · Chapter III — Meetings We Actually Keep
Default to fewer, shorter, and optional
Why this rule exists
Meetings expand to fill the calendar you give them, and every standing meeting you add is a permanent tax you'll pay long after the reason for it fades. The default should lean toward fewer of them, shorter than the calendar's polite hour, and optional wherever possible, because the alternative, a week diced into thirty-minute fragments, destroys the long uninterrupted stretches where the actual building happens. A maker who loses their morning to a 10am meeting often loses the whole morning, not just the half hour, because the anticipation of an interruption prevents them from going deep in the first place. Protecting large blocks of unscheduled time is not a perk, it's how a small studio out-ships bigger ones. Making meetings optional also builds a quiet accountability: a meeting nobody would voluntarily attend is a meeting that shouldn't exist, and optionality surfaces that fast.
In practice
Question every recurring meeting on your calendar at least quarterly, and cancel the ones running on inertia. When you do meet, book the shortest slot that could work and end early when you're done rather than filling the time. Cluster meetings into the same part of the day so the rest stays open for focus, and protect at least a couple of no-meeting stretches a week as a team norm. Make attendance optional by default and mean it, so nobody feels they have to show up to a meeting they'll get nothing from. Send notes afterward so skipping costs nothing. And treat 'this could have been a message' as a genuine, blameless observation, not a passive-aggressive jab.
When it doesn't apply
Some things really are faster and warmer live: a thorny design debate, a delicate conversation, a kickoff where alignment matters more than efficiency. And a brand-new team member often needs more synchronous time than a veteran, so calibrate rather than applying the minimalism dogmatically.