Avoid meetings

At MUI, we avoid meetings, as much as possible. Meetings should be a last resort escalation for things that can’t be solved asynchronously.

How

Strategies to make the best of meetings:

Ask for the objective of the meeting. Then see if it can’t be answered directly by messages. If it does, cancel it.
End meetings with an action plan with: 1. who does 2. what by 3. when.

We avoid meetings because they don't support the asynchronous workflow and are hard to conduct due to time zone differences.
We avoid brainstorming meetings because brainstorming is almost more effective done async.
We avoid ad-hoc because:
1. each one requires schedule coordination of attendees, and with many different time zones, it’s hard.
2. the lack of a clear structure can often lead to unproductive meetings.

The best times to have meetings:

Group meetings. Plan for them as much as possible around 1 pm UTC. This is the time the most friendly with the team’s timezone and the need to push more toward the US timezone.
One-on-one. Plan for them as much as possible where most of the other meetings can’t happen. For example:
- with Europe + US: plan them as much as possible around the end of the day for people in Europe.
- with Europe + India: plan them as much as possible around the beginning of the day for people in Europe.