Meetings and burnout? Don’t these two make strange bedfellows? A meeting is supposed to be a very important communication. But wait a minute. Not all meetings are such. Far from it. In fact, meetings are so unproductive that they produce burnout. This calls for finding ways to avoid meetings burnout effectively.
Meetings are supposed to be integral to any organization’s communication and business. This is where the critical issues relating to the organization are supposed to be discussed. But again, that they are supposed to doesn't mean they are! In fact, the futility of meetings has become such a talked about topic in corporate circles that the very idea of meetings has invited derision and ridicule.
Findings from The National Statistics Council best indicate the situation with meetings:

• About 37 percent of employees’ time is spent on meetings
• In the US, meetings of all kinds across all formats number around 11 million every working days. Some estimates put this at as high as 17 million
• During most meetings, agenda items take up only half the time
• On average, the American employee attends two meetings every day

If all these were to produce the desired result, there would be no stopping the country. It could grow by leaps and bounds and become immeasurably wealthier than it is now. Unfortunately, just the opposite is true. If there is one factor that makes the highest contribution to sluggishness of the economy, it has to be meetings.
In fact, the inanity of meetings has often attracted satire. This fun saying from the humorist Dave Berry sums up everything about meetings: “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved and never will achieve its full potential, that word would be “meetings”!
Is it any surprise that meetings may not produce anything useful most of the time, but produce one result unfailingly: burnout? It is this undesirable result of a meeting that needs to be curbed if the organization has to spend its time more constructively and creatively.
What are the ways to avoid meetings burnout effectively?
Having understood the utter lack of usefulness of meetings, the next step would have to be finding out the ways to avoid meetings burnout effectively. The starting point of how to discover ways to avoid meetings burnout effectively is the understanding that despite all the negative things that are said about meetings, they are indispensable.
The point to note is that meetings are unavoidable, but organizations have to find out ways by which to make meetings effective. These are some of the ways by which meetings can be made to serve their purpose, which will help devise ways to avoid meetings burnout effectively:
Call a meeting only when it is absolutely necessary
When more than a third of the American workforce is spending its time on meetings without their contributing to the bottom-line, it is obvious that meetings are being called unnecessarily. What happens when half the participants in a meeting do nothing other than to twiddle their thumbs, pretending to understand what is being discussed? Isn’t this the surest prescription for disaster?
So, calling for a meeting only when it is absolutely necessary is one of the ways to ways to avoid meetings burnout effectively. Many organizations make the mistake of calling for meetings on fixed times of a day of the week. Nothing much is achieved by doing this.
Know whom to invite for the meeting
When it is determined that meetings are indeed necessary, an important factor to decide is whom to invite. Only those who are connected to the meeting agenda and who have something to contribute to the meeting should be invited. Inviting someone for the sole reason that her manager is in the meeting makes no sense if the person is going to serve no useful purpose. Many meetings end up having more people than are needed.
Discuss just what was planned
Another of the ways to ways to avoid meetings burnout effectively is to set an agenda well in advance of the meeting, and more importantly, sticking to the agenda. Many meetings meander for hours without even many times coming to the topic. This is an utter waste of time and kills into the productivity of the organization. First of all, calling for a meeting that was not necessary and having the unneeded people in it are a waste of time. Added to these, if the meeting goes about wasting further time in talking about items that are completely unnecessary, it makes the meeting even more meaningless.
Read more :    https://www.trainhr.com/control/ways-to-avoid-meetings-burnout-effectively