Discussion keeps the world turning.
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Today with Xingyu and Yuxuan.
Coming up, 10 hours a week or more.
That's what the average worker spends in meetings in terms of time.
Calendars are overflowing.
Focus is fractured.
And real work continues.
Keeps getting pushed aside.
Meetings of course are necessary sometimes, but are we having too many?
After that, would you climb into a sci-fi looking pod for an hour if I promised a sharper mind, deeper sleep and a slower clock on aging for you?
Well, it's going mainstream and we'll discuss who it helps, who it doesn't and what they're not telling you before you book a session in a hyperbolic oxygen chamber.
Sounds fancy, doesn't it?
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Every workplace has them, yet not everyone truly enjoys them.
I'm talking about meetings.
What were once meant to help teams communicate and make decisions have, for many employees, become one of the biggest obstacles to getting real work done.
Around the world.
If you look it up, you'll find some varying statistics, but knowledge workers now spend roughly 10 to 15 hours each week in meetings.
Managers often spend even more time.
As the calendar becomes increasingly packed, employees are finding themselves constantly interrupted and struggling to focus on any task they have to do in one given day.
But why are meetings failing?
Is it just that there are too many of them or we don't know how to have a good, effective meeting anymore?
I want to share uh, you shouldn't sing you a couple of stats, a couple of more stats, before we get started with our chat on this.
Um yeah, so 10 to 15 hours for people like you and i right your average worker.
Managers and directors about 13 to 20 hours a week or more than 20 hours.
Executives 20 to 23 hours per week or more.
And it all depends on your company size.
So employees at large companies with more than 1000 staff.
They spend an average of about 128 hours per week in a meeting.
The smaller the firm, the fewer the hours, it seems.
By the way, this is from a website called...
Workflow.ai, I think.
Yeah.
And then the final stat I wanted to share was industry data.
30 to 35% of all meetings are considered unproductive or a waste of time.
Okay, so imagine that we totally have five workdays during a week and now you're spending probably two to three workdays on purely having meetings.
Yeah, when you put it like that, it does sound a little crazy, doesn't it?
Right, but I mean, the higher level your title is, the more hours you spend on meetings.
And I am doing the math.
I feel like I am on the bottom level because I don't spend like 10.
We're the frontline workers.
Yeah, frontline workers maybe.
But we for me actually, I don't spend that much time on meetings.
Well how, how?
How many times a week?
Like once, twice a week, three times?
Yeah, once or twice, i guess.
In total like two, three hours.
That's maximum.
Not so bad then, but that's not.
That's not the norm either.
So what is it why?
Why and this has become a recent discussion people are talking about this, talking about workplace meeting.
What's the what's the reason it's become such a hot issue?
Yeah, I mean, more and more people find that meetings have become a status symbol.
So in some offices or industries, you can find many of them having a calendar full of meetings.
And that is seen as they are very important or productive. they are visibly busy.
And that can be translated to like, I am doing a great job.
And I get it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the reports says that the meetings are used to prove someone is working when they aren't sure how to actually move a project forward.
So it's more like you are Performing to, maybe to your leaders, or performing to your employees, that we are doing something really serious, but actually it's not effective or productive.
Performance culture.
Performance culture or spectator culture, because not everyone is active in a meeting too, right?
You know, companies may have a lot of meetings.
There was an article on this in the paper.cn and they were talking about this.
They said that you know a lot of companies.
They've fallen into this trap where people are invited to meetings just in case like, just in case you have something to contribute.
Oh, yes.
It's a gamble?
That's what they call the spectator culture.
That sounds so familiar.
Wow.
Yes, because they always invite you to the meeting, but probably sometimes you are not even part of the project.
It's just okay.
Maybe you can come up with some idea that can smooth something, but you will have to go with this meeting, join this meeting for a whole, probably three hours.
Yeah, and this is why I think this has become such a hot issue these days is because of this spectator culture, meeting culture, where people are invited to go but you're not officially in the meeting, but yet you're in the meeting.
But you're not expected to say anything.
But if you want to say something, you're welcome to say something.
So it's this huge kind of gray area where employees are expected to be there but not necessarily expected to take part.
And then there's an even more extreme case where apparently, at major domestic tech companies, employees were expected to attend both early morning and late night meetings just to show that they were there like, almost like taking attendance in a class.
And that is not very popular with the employees when you ask them to do that.
But what about their punch-in, punch-out system?
So if they're using meetings as this kind of alert or a system.
But what about the machines that you can put your fingerprint on?
So I have seen an anecdote on website that says that they have this daily meeting at 9pm.
But some of the employees, yes.
So some of the employees will go back home and stay for like a few hours and then come back.
At 9 pm for this meeting, so that they are present to show the manager they're present, but actually they are not contributing or the meeting doesn't have any fruits to produce.
This is a worldwide issue as well.
And some companies have gone kind of the extra mile to make sure that the meetings aren't a waste of time.
Instagram has done so.
Southwest Airlines, that airline company.
They've started to realize that too many meetings might be slowing things down.
And now they're giving employees the right to say no to a meeting if it interrupts their focused work time.
The Instagram chief, his name is Adam Aseri.
He ordered staff back to the office five days a week starting in February of 2026.
So they were kind of doing a hybrid thing for a long time.
And you would think that it would be the comeback to work that was the major headline for that company.
But he wrote it in a memo to them.
He said, we all spend too much time in meetings that are not effective and it's slowing us down.
This is one of their new key directives after coming back full time.
He said that employees should have biweekly one-on-one meetings and decline meetings that fall during their focus blocks.
So that's a pretty big company.
I can't really relate to that one because mentioning your focus blocks.
If I have a meeting at, let's say, 2.30.
Then before 230 I cannot start doing something that I need to focus deeply on this project, because I know after like 30, 40 minutes I have to be interrupted and then I have to go to the meeting.
Interesting.
Yes.
So it's the opposite because they say that if you are interrupted by a task, right?
Yeah.
And that might be like a little email or a text message in a group chat, like even something very small, that it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully regain deep concentration after you've been interrupted.
They did a study on that.
They did a Harvard study on that.
If you're interrupted while you're really focused on a task, it takes you almost a half an hour to get back on task.
But you're saying...
It works in the opposite too.
Not if you're already working on something, but if you know a meeting is coming.
It's going to stop you from focusing.
Yeah, I'd rather do something more like simpler tasks.
Yes.
And then after the meeting, it also takes me another 20 minutes to start my like deep work mode.
Exactly.
I think it totally makes sense because for some tasks or for some projects it requires you to actually kind of focus deeply on that project.
And when you're having another text project, Even though it is really small and it is a quick issue that you can deal with in probably five minutes.
Your mind just got interrupted.
And that is when I think you... It is something that we are really against because we...
We kind of need that chunk of time to finish something.
Okay, so you can lose your focus on your morning tasks if you know you have a meeting coming in the afternoon.
And Xinyu just said it you will avoid bigger tasks and save them for later, because you know a meeting's coming.
Yes.
Okay, so that's a disruption.
Then we learned I just talked about it the 23 minutes and 15 seconds or whatever it was.
To get back on track if you're interrupted.
That's called attention residue.
That's called attention residue.
So that's while you're working on something.
Then they have something called the meeting hangover.
And the meeting hangover, this was written about in the Harvard Business Review.
They found that 28 of workplace meetings leave employees, with lingering negative effects of Making it harder to concentrate, reducing motivation and dragging down productivity for hours afterwards.
And it's not rare.
More than 90 of people surveyed said that they've experienced a meeting hangover at least occasionally.
And over half said that it disrupted their workflow.
47% said that they felt less engaged from their work.
And about 50% said it even affected their relationships with their colleagues.
They felt disconnected from the team or wanted to be left alone.
So let's review.
Knowing you have a meeting coming later is disruptive.
Getting some sort of meeting notification while you're working on something is disruptive.
And then after the meeting is disruptive.
I'm starting to wonder why we ever have meetings at all.
And that's how much people hate meetings.
It's true.
I am guessing one of the reasons might be for these people who are in the managerial roles.
They feel assured.
They have this sense of safety that everybody is here.
They are contributing to...
Maybe what kind of things we're going to do or the directions we're going, or sometimes, through the meeting, we can make the decisions or get things done.
So for these managers or supervisors, it can be a good thing.
But for employees, it can be a disaster.
They don't like it.
So how can we make a good meeting then?
What does a good meeting look like?
Is there such thing as a good meeting?
Yes, of course.
One of them is one suggested by Rebecca Hintz.
She's a leading expert on work transformation and she puts forward this 4D CEO test.
And 4D means debate, decide, discuss or develop.
So 4D.
Before the meeting, you have to identify whether your meeting is able to debate decide, discuss or develop.
Otherwise, you don't hold this meeting at all.
So if you don't pass that 4D test, then the meeting is pointless and there's no need to interrupt everyone.
Right.
A lot of these meetings are about debate, decide, discuss, or develop.
At least it's about discuss.
The point that we mentioned before, while engaging a lot of people who are probably not relevant to this project.
They're invited to join this meeting because they're wanted to discuss.
But as an employee, if you're invited quote unquote, invited to a meeting, don't you feel like you have to attend?
Yeah.
Right?
Yes.
I mean, technically, you might not have to.
But I'm asking, if you say no, are you worried that you might look bad?
Yeah, you do.
Exactly.
I actually attended some of these meetings and this is a kind of we call it brainstorming session.
That's why they're inviting a lot of people to join this.
And anybody who are possibly can be, you know, contributing to this project are invited.
But the thing is that during these kind of meetings You've got to need somebody who quote unquote has the power to talk.
And as we say, we are frontline workers.
We're the ones who do the job.
We're not the ones who can decide what the direction of the project is.
Maybe I can make you feel a little bit.
It's Monday.
Maybe you had a meeting already.
Maybe you have one later this afternoon.
But I'll try to make you feel a little bit better by explaining what Jeff Bezos did.
He's kind of known from Amazon, obviously, as having a non-traditional management style.
And he has a meeting structure at Amazon that he calls the smartest thing Amazon ever did.
He said, many, many years ago, we outlawed PowerPoint presentations during meetings.
He was talking at a forum on leadership back.
This was a few years ago when he was talking about this.
During a meeting, somebody will stand up and give a PowerPoint presentation, and then the person usually just stands there and stares at the presentation, at the slide, as they're reading off what's on the slide.
Bezos didn't like that.
He banned them.
And he said, it's the smartest thing we ever did.
And here's what they do now.
Here's how an Amazon meeting starts.
Each person at the meeting sits and silently reads a six page memo for about the first half an hour of the meeting about what the meeting is going to be about.
During the reading, the silent reading time, sounds like a kindergarten, doesn't it?
During the silent reading time, you can take notes, right?
Or make questions, like if you have some questions about it.
But the reason Jeff Bezos came with this kind of design is he guarantees that everyone at that meeting knows exactly what the meeting is supposed to be about.
A six page.
It's a memo about the thing that they are going to be discussing.
And he designed it that way so that he wouldn't wonder if employees were coming to the meeting unprepared.
Like they hadn't read what the meeting was supposed to be about.
They don't know what the major issues are.
So he has them sit there for a half an hour and then take some notes on the paper their thoughts about it, any questions they might have.
What do you think about this style?
Well, at least they are actually spending time on understanding what the meeting is about.
So it's not like two extremes.
One side is you are spending time reading off the slides and everybody's probably not listening and they have no understanding on that.
Another side is that you're totally super efficient and you have fully prepared and getting to the meeting and give your advice and everything.
But now it is in the middle ground.
It offers you time to read the memos.
Probably it's not like saving a ton of time, but it's saving half of the time that you spent before.
I was wondering how about giving the employees the memo before the meeting.
Because you can't guarantee they're going to read it.
I wouldn't read it.
Yeah.
But everybody's reading like speed is different.
So maybe you take like 40 minutes to read the memo.
Like an elementary school class.
It's true.
But I don't know.
Maybe it does solve that problem of being prepared.
Anyway, we have a meeting later this afternoon.
I'll see you there.
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Coming up next, as humans, of course, we need oxygen.
But is more always better?
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What if I told you that spending an hour inside a futuristic looking pod could help you feel younger, think clearer, sleep better and maybe even slow down your aging?
Well, it sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but it is reality.
It's called a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber and it's one of the hottest wellness trends in recent years.
Yushin, what is going on?
Everybody wants inside one of these things these days.
Oh, yeah.
These kind of chambers or it looks like a capsule have become a popular health and wellness trend, attracting not only the elderly but also middle aged or young people even seeking these oxygen supplementation.
Some civilian versions of these chambers are being aggressively marketed as high-tech solutions for anti-aging and for beauty, for immunity boosting, even cancer prevention.
But investigations show that these chambers, which can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars to over a million yuan, are appearing in spas, gyms and private homes.
But all of these places.
They will create a very comfortable environment for you, make you feel that you're in a very luxury spa.
But is it really effective?
The thing is that experts are kind of doubting it.
Well, OK.
So if you want to buy one of these things, it's hundreds of thousands to over a million yuan.
OK, but nobody's probably buying one of these things.
Michael Jackson, I think, had one of these in his house and there was like some drama surrounding that.
But the average person isn't buying them.
So you go to a spa for... to this hyperbaric oxygen chamber and you pay how much per session?
Usually it's several hundreds of yuan for per session.
I guess it's roughly an hour session.
Like at the Experience Center in Beijing, it costs nearly 700 yuan.
So that's over $100 for an hour.
For an hour.
Yes.
And if you buy an annual membership, that is nearly 40,000 yuan.
So it's nearly $6,000.
And I guess it's very costly for our ordinary people.
It's more for those who have that kind of...
I've seen some of the short videos, like, I guess, rich people.
They are paying monthly to go to visit these hyperbaric chambers.
Sales representatives.
They claim that users need to have about 30 sessions before seeing some notable results.
They recommend four or five sessions a week for the best outcome.
It's like...
Every weekday you'd have to go there, right?
Medical experts, though, are raising concerns about these exaggerated marketing claims.
I mean, when I've heard about these things before, I know pro athletes use these claims.
I know entertainers will sometimes use these, particularly if they I mentioned Michael Jackson, but there are others as well if their schedule like you, imagine a singer on stage, if they're performing a lot, then it's going to have a big toll on their body.
So I've heard of them using it.
And then I've heard of hospital uses before as well, you know, for medical patients.
But are they actually effective?
I mean the experts you said.
They're kind of raising a red flag and saying maybe not for everyone here.
Actually for medical purposes.
They are quite effective and scientifically proven for treating acute carbon monoxide poisoning and some other issues or conditions related to um oxygen deficiency, like scuba divers, exactly right, but that's okay.
But what about the anti-aging claims?
This is not that, you know, scientifically proved, because a lot of experts and scientists are arguing that this research is limited by small sample sizes and also lack of control groups and potential conflicts of interest, because some of these report papers and proven to be effective papers are probably also the company of selling these kind of chambers.
Mm-hmm.
So that means then that healthy people don't really need, oh, this would be, what would you call it?
Oxygen supplementation?
Does that mean healthy people don't need any more oxygen in their bodies?
Because normally we do have now some of these smartwatches and their little devices that can test the blood oxygen situation in your body.
If you are healthy, the percentage is above 95, which means that your body has already the oxygen saturation of 95.
There's literally no more you can put in there.
Exactly.
So if you're healthy, there's totally no need that you need to put in more oxygen in your body.
But I have seen some consumers they are going there to improve their sleep, improve their anxiety and relieve fatigue.
Yeah, there are some instances.
And I guess experts also note that for some of the groups it can be effective to improve your sleep or alleviate fatigue.
But if you want to cure some of the diseases, then it's not working.
Or if you want to look like you're 21 years old again.
Maybe.
That's not going to happen.
Maybe not going to happen.
Yeah, I kind of understand why it might help with anxiety because it would be very calming.
Well, I suppose it could be anxiety inducing for some people being inside a pod, but it could also be very calming, depending on what your personal experience with it was kind of escaping other sounds, outside sounds and other stresses and just kind of chilling out for a while.
I'd like to try one myself.
Yes.
And I have seen some of the reviews.
Some say they can have this experience of your ears pop, like when you are on an airplane or something.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I'm going to wait for it to get cheaper, though.
Before I try it.
All right, that's all we have for Roundtable 4 today.
For Yuxin and Xinyi, I'm Steve.
Thanks for being with us and see you next time.
