The average knowledge worker attends 62 meetings per month. Somewhere around 31 of those could have been emails. The other 31 were required by people who believe that the act of being present in a Zoom call constitutes productivity.

You are going to attend these calls. You cannot get out of all of them. Here is how to survive them.

Before the Call

Read the agenda, if one exists. This sounds obvious. Most people don't do it. The people who do read the agenda arrive with a response ready, say one useful thing early, and can coast through the remaining 40 minutes with credibility established.

Check your camera setup once, not continuously. Your background needs to be inoffensive (blank wall, bookshelf, or the virtual blur option). Your lighting needs to be in front of you, not behind you. Your camera needs to be at eye level, not shooting up your nostrils. Spend two minutes on this before the first call and never think about it again.

Know your mute button. This is not optional. You need to be able to hit mute within 0.3 seconds of realizing you are making ambient noise. A dog bark, a neighbor's power tool, or the sound of you opening a bag of chips while on mute is a normal human experience. Unmuting before saying anything to a silent room is a cardinal sin.

The Camera Question

You do not owe every call your camera on. The norm varies by company and manager.

If your company is camera-always: have your camera on. It is not worth the political cost of being the person whose camera is always off.

If your company is camera-optional: assess the meeting. All-hands? Camera on. Core team standup? Camera on. Wednesday afternoon check-in with 24 people about a project you are not the lead on? Camera optional.

The rule for camera-on meetings: look at the camera, not the thumbnail of your own face. Everyone can tell when you are watching yourself. It reads as either vanity or anxiety, neither of which serves you.

During the Call

The 10-minute rule. In any call longer than 30 minutes, you need to say something substantive within the first 10 minutes. Not a question. A contribution. "That tracks — I'd add that [X] is also a factor" or "I ran into this last week and the fix was [Y]." This establishes your presence and buys you the remainder of the call to do other work while staying alert for your name.

The double-window setup. On any call where you are not presenting or actively leading: open the meeting in one window, your actual work in another. Stay in the meeting — don't mute and fully check out — but you can process a significant amount of email or documentation while half-listening. Your brain can track the audio and surface relevant keywords ("what do you think, [your name]?") with practice.

Mute when not speaking. Always. Every time. Without exception. The people who forget to mute are responsible for the majority of unnecessary call extensions as the group spends four minutes not saying anything waiting for someone to figure out who is making that sound.

Don't fill silences. If someone asks a question and there is a three-second pause, do not reflexively speak to fill it. Whoever fills silences in meetings trains the group that they will always fill silences and then gets expected to do it every time. Pause tolerance is a skill. Develop it.

The Meeting Types and How to Handle Each

The Weekly Team Standup. You have 2 minutes max. Give a status in this format: what you did, what you're doing next, any blockers. That's it. The standup is not for discussion, diagnosis, or debate. Anything that needs discussion gets put in the parking lot and handled afterward with the relevant people.

The Status Update Call That Should Have Been an Email. This is the single most common meeting type and the most preventable. You cannot prevent them from being called. You can minimize your required contribution to them. Send a brief written status before the call if one is requested. Reference it during the call rather than re-explaining. Move through it efficiently and let the meeting end.

The Brainstorm/Ideation Call. These run long. Have two or three actual ideas ready before the call — not formed opinions, just directions. The person who says "what if we approached it from angle X" is contributing; the person who says "I agree with what Sarah said" is not. Have an idea. Say it early.

The All-Hands. Your job is to be present and attentive for the parts that are relevant to you, and to ask one genuine question during Q&A if you have one. All-hands are cultural events as much as informational ones. Being visibly engaged is part of the participation.

The Endgame

Meetings end when someone ends them. Most meetings run five to ten minutes over because no one wants to be the person who ends them.

If you are the meeting organizer: end the meeting when the agenda is complete, not when the timer hits zero. "I think we've covered what we needed to — I'll send a summary with action items. Thanks everyone." Seven words to end a call. Use them.

If you are not the organizer: note the time clearly. If the conversation is circular and the call is over time, "just to be respectful of everyone's time — should we schedule a follow-up for X or can that go in the doc?" is a legitimate and appreciated call closer.

The meeting calendar is not going to get better on its own. Your job is to be efficient in the ones you can't avoid, effective in the ones that matter, and strategic about which ones you find ways out of.

That last skill is the most advanced. We'll cover it another time.