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Picture this:

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It's Monday morning,

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you're at the office,

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you're settling in for the day at work,

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and this guy that you sort of 
recognize from down the hall,

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walks right into your cubicle

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and he steals your chair.

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Doesn't say a word —

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just rolls away with it.

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Doesn't give you any information
about why he took your chair

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out of all the other chairs 
that are out there.

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Doesn't acknowledge the fact 
that you might need your chair

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to get some work done today.

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You wouldn't stand for 
it. You'd make a stink.

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You'd follow that guy
back to his cubicle

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and you'd say, "Why my chair?"

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Okay, so now it's Tuesday morning
and you're at the office,

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and a meeting invitation pops 
up in your calendar.

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(Laughter)

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And it's from this woman who you 
kind of know from down the hall,

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and the subject line references some 
project that you heard a little bit about.

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But there's no agenda.

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There's no information about why
you were invited to the meeting.

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And yet you accept the 
meeting invitation, and you go.

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And when this highly 
unproductive session is over,

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you go back to your desk,

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and you stand at your 
desk and you say,

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"Boy, I wish I had those two hours back,

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like I wish I had my chair back."

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(Laughter)

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Every day, we allow our coworkers,

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who are otherwise very, 
very nice people,

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to steal from us.

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And I'm talking about something far 
more valuable than office furniture.

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I'm talking about time. Your time.

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In fact, I believe that

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we are in the middle
of a global epidemic

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of a terrible new illness
known as MAS:

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Mindless Accept Syndrome.

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(Laughter)

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The primary symptom of 
Mindless Accept Syndrome


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is just accepting a meeting invitation
the minute it pops up in your calendar.

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(Laughter)

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It's an involuntary reflex — ding, 
click, bing — it's in your calendar,

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"Gotta go, I'm already late 
for a meeting." (Laughter)

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Meetings are important, right?

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And collaboration is key to 
the success of any enterprise.

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And a well-run meeting can yield 
really positive, actionable results.

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But between globalization

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and pervasive information technology,

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the way that we work

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has really changed dramatically 
over the last few years.

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And we're miserable. (Laughter)

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And we're miserable not because the 
other guy can't run a good meeting,

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it's because of MAS, our 
Mindless Accept Syndrome,

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which is a self-inflicted wound.

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Actually, I have evidence to prove
that MAS is a global epidemic.

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Let me tell you why.

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A couple of years ago, I put a video 
on Youtube, and in the video,

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I acted out every terrible 
conference call you've ever been on.

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It goes on for about five minutes,

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and it has all the things that we 
hate about really bad meetings.

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There's the moderator who has 
no idea how to run the meeting.

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There are the participants who 
have no idea why they're there.

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The whole thing kind of collapses
into this collaborative train wreck.

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And everybody leaves very angry.

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It's kind of funny.

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(Laughter)

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Let's take a quick look.

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(Video) Our goal today is to come to an 
agreement on a very important proposal.

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As a group, we need to decide if —

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bloop bloop —

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Hi, who just joined?

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Hi, it's Joe. I'm working from home today.

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(Laughter)

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Hi, Joe. Thanks for 
joining us today, great.

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I was just saying, we have a lot of people 
on the call we'd like to get through,

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so let's skip the roll call 


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and I'm gonna dive right in.

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Our goal today is to come to an 
agreement on a very important proposal.

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As a group, we need to decide if —

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bloop bloop —

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(Laughter)

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Hi, who just joined?

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No? I thought I heard a beep. (Laughter)

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Sound familiar?

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Yeah, it sounds familiar 
to me, too.

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A couple of weeks after I put that online,

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500,000 people in dozens of countries,

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I mean dozens of countries,

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watched this video.

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And three years later, it's still getting 
thousands of views every month.

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It's close to about a million right now.

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And in fact, some of the biggest
companies in the world,

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companies that you've 
heard of but I won't name,

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have asked for my permission to use 
this video in their new-hire training

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to teach their new employees how 
not to run a meeting at their company.

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And if the numbers —

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there are a million views and it's
being used by all these companies —

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aren't enough proof that we have 
a global problem with meetings,

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there are the many, many thousands

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of comments posted online

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after the video went up.

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Thousands of people wrote things like,

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"OMG, that was my day today!"

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"That was my day every day!"

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"This is my life."

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One guy wrote,

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"It's funny because it's true.

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Eerily, sadly, depressingly true.

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It made me laugh until I cried.

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And cried. And I cried some more."

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(Laughter)

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This poor guy said,

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"My daily life until 
retirement or death, sigh."

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These are real quotes

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and it's real sad.

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A common theme running through
all of these comments online

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is this fundamental belief 
that we are powerless

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to do anything other 
than go to meetings

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and suffer through these 
poorly run meetings

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and live to meet another day.

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But the truth is, we're 
not powerless at all.

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In fact, the cure for MAS
is right here in our hands.

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It's right at our fingertips, literally.

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It's something that I call ¡No MAS!

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(Laughter)

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Which, if I remember my 
high school Spanish,

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means something like, 
"Enough already, make it stop!"

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Here's how No MAS 
works. It's very simple.

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First of all, the next time you 
get a meeting invitation

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that doesn't have a lot 
of information in it at all,

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click the tentative button!

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It's okay, you're allowed, 
that's why it's there.

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It's right next to the accept button.

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Or the maybe button, or whatever button 
is there for you not to accept immediately.

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Then, get in touch with the person
who asked you to the meeting.

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Tell them you're very excited 
to support their work,

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ask them what the goal 
of the meeting is,

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and tell them you're interested in learning 
how you can help them achieve their goal.

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And if we do this often enough,

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and we do it respectfully,

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people might start to be 
a little bit more thoughtful

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about the way they put together
meeting invitations.

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And you can make more thoughtful 
decisions about accepting it.

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People might actually start 
sending out agendas. Imagine!

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Or they might not have a conference call
with 12 people to talk about a status

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when they could just do a quick
email and get it done with.

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People just might start to change their 
behavior because you changed yours.

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And they just might bring
your chair back, too. (Laughter)

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No MAS!

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Thank you.

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(Applause).