It is mid-afternoon in a glass-walled corner office, the kind that overlooks a skyline filled with productivity software logos and the hum of corporate ambition. The chief executive, surrounded by half-drunk coffee cups and flickering alerts from another video call, glances at the clock. The calendar says there are two more meetings before day’s end, but the real work, the thinking, the decision making, the writing, will begin only after the last “quick sync” finally ends. Across industries, this picture has become routine. For many C-suite leaders, meetings have consumed the very space once reserved for leadership.
That collision is now prompting a quiet rebellion. Executives from technology to banking are reworking their calendars in pursuit of something that sounds old-fashioned: time to think. They are questioning whether five, six, or even ten hours of meetings a day truly move the company forward or simply perpetuate a cycle of over-scheduling. What was previously treated as a natural part of managerial life is now seen as a barrier to productivity and, in some cases, to creativity itself.
Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) sparked early debate when its leadership wiped nearly all recurring meetings from employees’ calendars and asked teams to justify every new one. Chief operating officer Kaz Nejatian wrote that every meeting should be viewed as a cost, not a default. The announcement, which rippled through the tech community, resonated far outside it. It gave shape to a question many senior leaders had been voicing quietly: how much time at work actually produces progress?
Elon Musk at Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shared a blunt answer. He told employees that excessive meetings were “the blight of big companies” and advised people to leave any gathering where they were not adding value. Mark Zuckerberg at Meta (NASDAQ: META) adopted a more measured version, encouraging smaller, faster meetings and giving employees open permission to walk out of sessions that did not help their work.
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) has taken aim at another dimension, the risk of virtual fatigue. He noted that endless online meetings, especially during and after the pandemic, eroded focus and made conversations shallower. Dimon’s point echoed a broader lesson emerging in large organizations: more contact does not automatically mean better communication.
In Europe, Carlsberg’s (CSE: CARL B) former chief executive Cees t’ Hart described how the Danish beer maker deliberately reduced meetings and internal reports, freeing executive time to engage directly with customers and operations. His approach turned out not to slow decisions but to speed them up, since people discussed fewer issues but acted faster on those that mattered.
Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) chief executive Bob Jordan has become a new voice in this global movement. He decided to block his calendar every afternoon from Wednesday to Friday, keeping those hours free from standing meetings. Jordan argues that back-to-back sessions make executives feel busy but not necessarily effective. The new policy gives him uninterrupted time for problem solving, leadership visits, or simply thinking through strategy without a conference link waiting at the top of each hour.
Research supports these high-profile shifts. A Microsoft study found that knowledge workers now spend 252% more time in meetings than before the pandemic, with many saying their best work happens early in the morning or after official hours. Harvard Business Review studies show that meeting-free days improve focus and job satisfaction, while collaboration quality remains stable. Together, these findings suggest that meeting reduction is not a management fad but a rational response to cognitive overload.
Southwest’s decision is particularly striking because it reframes calendar management as part of corporate culture rather than personal discipline. When the CEO blocks time, the effect cascades downward; others feel permission to claim their own white space. It is a signal that doing fewer things better may serve an airline’s future as well as any new efficiency initiative. It also reflects a maturing understanding among business leaders that leadership requires judgment, and judgment requires time to think, not just time to talk.
As more executives try variations of this approach, the calendar has become the latest frontier of leadership reform. The next phase may not be about productivity tools or new frameworks but about reclaiming the most finite asset in business, attention. The CEOs who manage to win it back are not escaping work. They are rediscovering what the work really is.
