When meetings are the norm—the first resort, the go-to tool to discuss, debate, and solve every problem—they no longer work. Meetings should be like salt—a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.

Further, meetings are major distractions. They require multiple people to drop whatever it is they’re doing and instead do something else. If you’re calling a meeting, you better be sure pulling seven people away from their work for an hour is worth seven hours of lost productivity. How often can you say that a given meeting was worth it? Remember, there’s no such thing as a one-hour meeting. If you’re in a room with five people for an hour, it’s a five-hour meeting.

Jason Fried.