You’ve thought it. Probably today.
Sitting in a meeting — maybe on your third video call before lunch — watching someone share their screen to read bullet points out loud. Or listening to a “quick sync” that has no agenda, no decisions to make, and no reason for you to be there.
Could this meeting have been an email?
The answer, almost certainly, is yes.
You didn’t say it out loud. Nobody does. But everyone in that meeting was thinking the same thing — including, possibly, the person who called it.
This phrase has become the unofficial anthem of modern work. It’s a meme, a punchline, and a genuine cry for help. And the fact that we all recognize it instantly tells you something important: meeting culture is broken, and everyone knows it.
Where the Phrase Came From
The exact origin is hard to pin down — it emerged organically from the collective exhaustion of knowledge workers everywhere. But it gained real momentum in the 2010s as calendar tools made scheduling effortless and corporate culture rewarded “collaboration” without questioning what that actually meant.
Then came the pandemic.
Remote work turned every conversation into a scheduled video call. The informal hallway chat became a 30-minute Zoom. The quick question became a meeting invite. And suddenly, the phrase wasn’t just relatable — it was a survival mechanism.
Social media, memes, and viral tweets amplified it. “This meeting could have been an email” became shorthand for a deeper frustration: the sense that your time isn’t respected, your presence isn’t necessary, and nothing you do in meetings ever seems to change anything.
Why It Resonates So Deeply
The phrase isn’t really about email. It’s about three things:
- Wasted time. When you’re in a meeting that doesn’t need you, you feel your time slipping away. You could be doing actual work. You could be thinking. You could be taking a break. Instead, you’re trapped in a calendar block, waiting for it to end.
- Lack of agency. You didn’t call the meeting. You didn’t set the agenda. You don’t control when it ends. You’re just… there. Required to attend something you had no say in creating.
- Silent frustration. You can’t say “this is pointless” without risking your reputation or your relationship with the organizer. So you stay quiet. You nod. You suffer in silence. And then you complain to your coworker afterward — or post anonymously online.
The phrase captures all of that in seven words. That’s why it resonates.
The Real Problem Isn’t Individual Meetings
Here’s what most people miss: the problem isn’t that one meeting that annoyed you this morning. The problem is systemic.
Organizations default to meetings. Need to share information? Schedule a meeting. Need to make a decision? Schedule a meeting. Need to align on something vague? Schedule a meeting. Not sure what to do? Schedule a meeting to figure it out.
Meetings are the path of least resistance. They feel productive even when they’re not. They give the illusion of progress — people talked, therefore something happened.
But the data tells a different story:
- 55% of remote workers say most meetings could have been an email
- 67% of meetings end with no clear action items
- The average professional spends 15% of their work life in meetings — and that number has increased every year since 2008
- Poorly organized meetings cost U.S. businesses an estimated $399 billion per year
That last number isn’t a typo. Billions. Every year. Wasted in conference rooms and video calls that didn’t need to happen.
How to Tell If a Meeting Should Be an Email
Not every meeting is pointless. Some meetings genuinely need to happen — complex decisions, nuanced discussions, relationship building, and collaborative problem-solving are hard to do asynchronously.
But many meetings aren’t that. They’re status updates. Information dumps. Announcements that could have been written down.
Here’s a simple framework. The meeting could probably be an email if:
- It’s one-way information sharing. If one person is talking and everyone else is just listening, that’s not a meeting. That’s a broadcast. Write it down and send it.
- There’s no decision to be made. Meetings are expensive — you’re paying for everyone’s time simultaneously. If there’s nothing to decide, you don’t need synchronous attention.
- The “discussion” is really just sequential monologues. Going around the room so everyone can give their update isn’t collaboration. It’s a performative status report that could be a shared document.
- You could get the same outcome by reading a document. If the meeting is walking through a presentation, ask yourself: could people just read this? If yes, send it to them and skip the meeting.
- Nobody needs to be there in real-time. If the topic doesn’t require immediate back-and-forth, asynchronous communication is almost always more efficient.
Why Nobody Says Anything
If everyone knows meetings are a problem, why doesn’t anything change?
Because speaking up is risky.
You can’t tell your boss their meeting was a waste of time — not without damaging the relationship. You can’t raise your hand in a team sync and say “why are we here?” — not without looking like you’re not a team player. You can’t even respond honestly to HR surveys — because you’re never quite sure they’re really anonymous.
So you stay quiet. You attend. You tune out. You move on.
And the person organizing the meeting? They have no idea it’s not working. They see full attendance and think everything’s fine. Nobody gives them honest feedback, so they keep running the same meeting, week after week, month after month.
This is the trap. Bad meetings persist because there’s no feedback loop. The people who know meetings are broken can’t say so, and the people who could fix them don’t know there’s a problem.
What Would Actually Fix This
The solution isn’t another productivity tip or meeting hygiene checklist. Those help at the margins, but they don’t address the core issue.
What’s needed is a way for attendees to give honest feedback — without fear of retaliation.
Think about it: what if, after every meeting, attendees could anonymously answer one simple question: Could this meeting have been an email?
And what if the results went to everyone — including the organizer — so the data couldn’t be hidden or ignored?
Suddenly, the feedback loop exists. Meeting organizers would know how their meetings are actually perceived. The meetings that work would be validated. The meetings that don’t would be exposed — not by any single person complaining, but by the collective voice of everyone in the room.
That’s not a fantasy. That’s exactly what we built.
How “Could Have Been an Email” Works
“Could Have Been an Email” is a platform that lets any meeting attendee submit a meeting for anonymous feedback.
Here’s how it works:
- You submit a meeting (name, date, time, attendees)
- Every attendee receives a short survey
- Attendees respond anonymously — no IP tracking, no device fingerprints, no way to identify anyone
- Results go to everyone equally — including the meeting organizer
No special access. No admin override. No way to see individual responses. Just aggregate data that shows how the group perceived the meeting.
The person who organized the meeting sees the same results as everyone else. If the meeting was valuable, the data will show it. If it wasn’t, the data will show that too.
You’re not complaining. You’re not going to HR. You’re simply giving the meeting a score — along with everyone else who was there.
Why Anonymity Is Essential
You might wonder: why does feedback need to be anonymous?
Because honesty requires safety.
If your boss can see that you rated their meeting poorly, you won’t be honest. You’ll soften your answers. You’ll say things are “fine” when they’re not. And the feedback becomes useless.
We’ve gone to extreme lengths to make anonymity real — not just a policy, but a technical guarantee. We don’t store email addresses after surveys close. We don’t track IP addresses or fingerprint devices. We require a minimum number of responses before sharing any results. We made it so that identifying individual respondents isn’t just against our rules — it’s architecturally impossible.
Because if people don’t trust the system, they won’t use it. And if they don’t use it, nothing changes.
The Goal Isn’t to Shame Organizers
This might sound like a tool for complaining. It’s not.
The goal is to give meeting organizers something they’ve never had: honest feedback from the people in the room.
Good organizers will welcome it. They’ll see what’s working, double down on effective meetings, and fix or cancel the ones that aren’t. They’ll become better leaders because they finally have real data instead of polite silence.
The meetings that shouldn’t exist will quietly disappear — not because someone complained, but because the data made it obvious.
That’s how culture changes. Not from top-down mandates, but from bottom-up honesty.
What You Can Do Today
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably sitting in too many meetings that shouldn’t exist. Here’s what you can do about it:
- For your own meetings: Before scheduling, ask yourself: could this be an email? Could it be a Slack message? Could it be a shared document? If yes, do that instead.
- For meetings you attend: Start paying attention to which ones are valuable and which ones aren’t. Notice the patterns. Which meetings have agendas? Which end with clear action items? Which ones leave you wondering why you were there?
- For meetings you can’t escape: Submit them for feedback. Anonymously. Let the data speak for itself.
You’ve sat through enough meetings that could have been emails. Do something about it.
