# Meetings are a point of escalation, not a starting point

**TL;DR:** Most meetings are just information downloads that could've been a doc. Treat meetings as a point of escalation based on complexity, not the default starting point.

Published 2023-04-20 · [View on Ben Balter's site](https://ben.balter.com/2023/04/20/meetings-are-a-point-of-escalation/)

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Asynchronous communication (Issues, PRs, Google Docs, and sometimes Slack) should be the default, reserving more synchronous media (like video calls and in-person meetings) for the types of conversations that uniquely benefit from their higher fidelity (brainstorming, whiteboarding, interpersonal conflict, social connection, etc.). Put another way, **the phrase "async first" should be taken literally**.

## Default to transferring context asynchronously

When starting up a new initiative or collaborating with a colleague for the first time, it's often tempting to "throw some time on their calendar" to "kick things off". Such kickoff meetings often consist primarily of an information download, sharing context from one coworker to another with a specific call to action or request for feedback. But information transfer isn't always the best use of synchronous time, especially when you consider the overhead of scheduling (especially across time zones), scaling (O(n) vs O(1)), and memorializing outcomes (as durable artifacts available to others). Not to mention, people learn differently. Not everyone absorbs information best by voice and in real time.

Instead, next time, consider transferring that context asynchronously (as a GitHub issue or Google Doc, for example), and then scheduling a meeting only if the conversation requires it. You'd be surprised how often it doesn't. A few minutes of reading or a few comments on an issue or Google Doc can often replace waiting days for mutual availability and a dedicated 30-minute block of time. In this sense, you can think of meetings as a point of *escalation* based on complexity, not as the default starting point for a workstream, initiative, or conversation.

## Meetings are *not* where work happens

> **Have meetings really gotten that out of hand?** I was curious, so [I wrote a quick script to pull stats from my own calendar](https://github.com/benbalter/gmail-and-google-calendar-stats). My first year at GitHub (2013), I had a grand total of **16** internal meetings. Yes, we were smaller back then, but we were also *dogmatic* about being async first, almost to a fault. As we grew, my second year I had 43 meetings, and things gradually increased from there. This year, I'm on track to have over **600** meetings. There's got to be a better way!

![Bar chart of my internal meetings per year, rising from 16 to over 600](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/282759/233466397-ff9737ce-7b51-45c1-a643-88a00bbce4cf.png)

[Working asynchronously by default](https://ben.balter.com/2022/03/17/why-async/#benefits-of-working-asynchronously) makes your culture more inclusive, makes decisions discoverable and permanent, creates space for learning, gives people better work-life balance, and produces better outcomes, faster. Async is also the key to making remote work, work.

### Hold colleagues to async first

If you receive a meeting invite (or if a colleague requests permission to send you a meeting invite) without context, an agenda, or a read-ahead doc, consider politely declining, or at least asking for one. It's well within your rights (you can even link to this post as a "get out of ~~jail~~ meeting free" card). After all, if the person requesting the meeting hasn't taken the time to distill their thoughts into writing, why should they be able to decide how you spend your own time?