The Shorter Meeting
Take back an hour a day by changing a default nobody chose.
Meetings are thirty or sixty minutes because that is what the calendar offers, not because that is how long the conversation needs.
Meetings tend to expand to fill whatever slot they are given. It is not a law, but it is a strong enough tendency to use: a meeting given fifty minutes usually takes fifty, and the same conversation given twenty-five often closes in twenty-five, because the shorter slot forces someone to get to the point. Changing the default changes the length without anyone having to be brisk.
Change the calendar default
Set new meetings to twenty-five and fifty minutes. Most calendar apps have this setting and almost nobody has touched it.
Put the decision in the invite
One line: what we are deciding. A meeting without a decision to make is usually an email.
Start on time, even at two people
Waiting for stragglers teaches everyone that the start time is a suggestion.
End when the decision is made
Not when the slot ends. Giving people back fifteen minutes is the thing that makes them accept shorter meetings.
Go deeper
What the paid version adds to this one.
How to shorten meetings you did not organise, without seeming difficult
The agenda format that makes a twenty-five minute meeting actually work
Which meetings genuinely need the full hour
Recorded before-and-after of the same meeting at both lengths