Maybe all those meetings you have aren't necessary. And if they are, maybe they needn't be as long. There are three things that guarantee zone-outs: rehashing what everyone already knows, talking about things that are relevant to only two or three people in the group, and going off topic.

A selection of tips from Seth Godin on how to make your meetings more effective:

• Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?

• Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious. [This might not work for story meetings, but can you imagine how much more quickly a weekly update meeting would go?]

• Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.

• The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.