Fortune – “More than being expensive, useless meetings are a quick way to stunt team productivity. Across industries, research shows that it takes 25 minutes to return your concentration back to an original task after a significant interruption. Meetings also increase the likelihood of people committing errors during a task, because they miss or repeat important components. And in one survey, 65% of workers said that meetings keep them from completing their own work. Complicating the issue is the fact that managers and employees don’t tend to operate on the same schedules. In engineering, for example, writers and developers typically plan their workloads in units of half a day, whereas managers work in hours—so there’s an inherent misalignment when it comes to meetings.  With the current need to bridge the physical distance between teams, managers are at risk of using excessive meetings to ease insecurities they have around communication. Yet at the same time, meetings have become more cumbersome than ever, as millions of employees with caregiving responsibilities need flexible schedules throughout the day (and night). Now that our heads have just about stopped spinning from the impact of the COVID pandemic, and we can ease into more permanent remote habits, we should seize this as a chance to cut the fat, stop managers from micromanaging, and empower employees to self-regulate. How? By relying less on meetings and more on data. Data is unbiased, accurate, and insightful in a way that humans can’t be (especially after the fifth meeting of the day). It can help managers better understand how teams are working, how projects are progressing, and even how employees are feeling—boosting overall trust and work quality. For many companies, data is the deciding factor in finally getting rid of useless meetings. Here’s why it’s time to follow suit in your workplace..”