Meetingageddon

Annual deletion of all recurring meetings to reset calendars and reclaim crafter time

Farhan Thawar
How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture

Meetingageddon

"Once a year at a random time, we will delete all recurring meetings that have more than two people, and are internal people only, so not interviews or external partner meetings. And then, we have a two-week moratorium where you're not allowed to add a recurring meeting." - Farhan Thawar

What It Is

Meetingageddon is Shopify's practice of periodically deleting every internal recurring meeting with more than two people. After the purge, there's a two-week moratorium on adding new recurring meetings—you can have one-off meetings, but not recurring ones.

The goal isn't to eliminate meetings entirely. It's to break the inertia of recurring meetings that accumulate over time and no longer serve their purpose. It forces teams to consciously choose which meetings actually need to exist.

How It Works

What Gets Deleted:

  • All internal recurring meetings with 3+ people
  • NOT one-on-ones (those are preserved)
  • NOT interviews or external partner meetings
  • NOT one-off meetings

The Two-Week Moratorium:

  • No new recurring meetings for two weeks
  • Forces teams to question: "Do we need a recurring meeting, or just one meeting?"
  • Allows for a clean reset before patterns reform

The Results at Shopify:

  • Individual contributors: ~3 hours of meetings per week (down from ~5-6)
  • Managers: ~6-7 hours per week (down from ~10)
  • Roughly 50-60% reduction in meeting time

How to Apply It

  1. Pick a random time - Don't announce it far in advance. The chaos monkey approach works best.

  2. Have admins delete everything - Go into calendars and purge all qualifying recurring meetings.

  3. Enforce the moratorium - For two weeks, no new recurring meetings. One-off meetings only.

  4. Let meetings reform organically - The meetings that truly need to exist will get recreated. The ones that don't, won't.

  5. Combine with async tools - Move announcements to tools like Workplace (feed-based) instead of Slack (interrupt-based) to further reduce meeting need.

The Complementary Move: Workplace Over Slack

Shopify combined Meetingageddon with moving announcements to Facebook Workplace (a feed you consume when ready) instead of Slack (which creates interrupt pressure). This combination created the biggest reduction in meeting time.

Different tools for different purposes:

  • Slack: Real-time collaboration, direct messages
  • Feed-based tools: Announcements, status updates, things you consume async

Why It Works

Recurring meetings have tremendous inertia:

  • They're always on the calendar
  • Hard to delete because "we talk about this thing every week"
  • People feel obligated to attend even when value is low

By deleting everything at once:

  • Everyone experiences the reset simultaneously
  • No one feels guilty about killing "their" meeting
  • Forces conscious choice about what to bring back

Source

  • Guest: Farhan Thawar
  • Episode: "How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture"
  • Key Discussion: (00:35:38 - 00:39:45) - How Meetingageddon works
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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