Helpful explanation of why this exists: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html and http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-08-26/

This encapsulates what successful meetings should be and what kind of meetings we should attend.

• Meetings should always have an agenda
• That agenda should be no longer than 10 points
• Its okay to have 15 min meetings.
• Meetings should be avoided at all costs when they can be. E.g. Someone calls a meeting to get status from you on a given thing. Just answer the status question before the meeting and save everyone time. Better yet, have that information always available in an automatic way.
• Meetings should be rejected if there is > 10 people involved.
• Meetings should never happen over lunch.
• If you don’t know what the meeting is for or if it is profitable, reject it.

The goal is to drive at focus, accuracy, and maximizing people’s time. This assumes then:

• People will get “out of their chair” and get stuff done proactively.
• People will communicate outside of meetings.
• Don’t wait for a meeting to get something done. Do it now!
• If you need an answer, go ask that person, if they don’t know, ask who knows, if they don’t know who knows, keep asking others until you figure it out.