Cut your calendar: make one recurring meeting a shared doc

Recurring invites multiply the cost

Open your calendar and count the recurring invites you never review. A recurring meeting is the calendar slot multiplied by every attendee and every week it renews. The hours add up quietly. GitLab has more than 2,100 employees in more than 65 countries, answers 85% of questions without a meeting, saves 15 hours per person per month, and has cut sprint planning time in half after moving to asynchronous work.

A short sync becomes a standing appointment. A status check becomes a place where nobody owns the next step. The meeting survives on familiarity, not output.

The question is whether the output can exist without the call. When it can, the meeting should be a renewal choice.

Use one doc as the renewal gate

The rule: before renewing a recurring meeting, define its output as a shared doc and use that page as the agenda, notes, and action record. Pick a recurring meeting you would not defend in a budget meeting. Start with the one that feels most replaceable.

• Pick the meeting. Choose a recurring invite whose purpose is status, alignment, or review. Name the output in a sentence: a decision, a status, a plan, or a list of blockers.
• Define the output. Write the meeting's intended result at the top of a shared doc. The doc needs a title, owner, and a clear question the meeting is supposed to answer.
• Make the doc the agenda. Put the agenda, notes, and action record in the same page. Anyone reading the page should know what was decided, who owns what, and what is unresolved.
• Run the next session with the doc open. During a call, keep the page in front of everyone and update it as you go. The call ends with the page updated.
• Cancel or shrink the meeting. Send a short note: you are testing a doc-first version. The invite is cancelled when the doc covers the output; otherwise, it shrinks for a short trial. The doc becomes the record.

Keep the doc short enough to read in a pass. A page full of raw talk and no decisions means the meeting has returned. The note should name the doc, the trial, and the fallback. When the team needs a call, keep it short and point to the page.

Save live time for work that needs it

GitLab puts process, policy, and decision changes into the handbook before the change is shared or takes effect. Work proposals move through written issue or merge-request threads, stakeholders answer in comments, and decisions land in those threads rather than on calls.

On the calls GitLab does hold, one shared page carries the agenda, captures notes, and records follow-ups as the call runs. Department goals are public, and progress is checked monthly through written updates instead of company-wide calls. It judges results, not presence, and people do not need to be online in a set time zone.

For GitLab, most remote work is asynchronous, roughly 80% to 90%, while live time is reserved for building relationships, urgent fixes, and complex coaching. Teams that swapped a forced daily call for a written update produced more thoughtful updates. One EWS Limited client moved brainstorming into a shared page, cut down on long video calls, and reported stronger ideas. For teams that span time zones, shared calendars that adjust to local time can cut scheduling mix-ups for over 80% of remote teams.

Structured agendas and the right tools make goal-setting meetings more efficient and useful. Keep live time for planning, problem-solving, or direct alignment; handle status updates and questions outside scheduled calls when possible. Written docs, steady check-ins, and course corrections can make goals useful guides for daily work. A graceful cancellation is a format change. Send the note, update the doc, and make the next renewal a choice.