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This policy briefing presents findings from a three-year longitudinal study of meeting frequency, duration, and reproductive behavior across 200 knowledge-economy firms. Our central finding is alarming: meetings are breeding.
The average knowledge worker in 2025 spent 23.7 hours per week in scheduled meetings — an increase of 69% since 2019. More critically, our data reveals that each meeting generates, on average, 1.4 follow-up meetings, yielding a meeting reproduction rate (Rm) well above the replacement threshold of 1.0.
We instrumented calendar systems across participating organizations using a novel metric: the Meeting Genealogy Index (MGI), which tracks parent-child relationships between calendar events through subject-line analysis and attendee overlap.
Exponential Growth Phase. Left unchecked, meeting populations double every 6.2 weeks. Only natural constraints — principally the 24-hour day and human biological needs — prevent infinite proliferation.
The Standing Meeting Paradox. Meetings designated as “recurring” account for 71% of total meeting-hours yet produce only 12% of documented action items. When participants were surveyed, 83% reported attending “out of habit or social obligation.”
Apex Predator Meetings. Certain meeting types — particularly “All-Hands” and “Strategic Planning Offsites” — consume the calendar time of subordinate meetings through a process analogous to ecological predation. One “Quarterly Business Review” was observed to cancel or absorb 34 smaller meetings in a single week.
The Pre-Meeting Pre-Meeting. In 23% of organizations, preparation for important meetings has itself become a meeting, which in turn requires its own preparatory meeting. The deepest recursion observed was five levels.
Without intervention, current trajectories suggest that by 2030, the average knowledge worker will spend more time in meetings than exists in a standard work week, a phenomenon achievable only through double-booking — which our data suggests is already widespread.