Shopify has something they call the Chaos Monkey 🐒.

Once a year, it deletes all recurring meetings with more than two people. The idea is simple: force teams to rethink which meetings are really needed.

The data shows why this is important:

📊 Employees spend on average 11.3 hours per week in meetings.

• Individual contributors: ~9 hours/week
• Managers & directors: ~13 hours/week
• And the higher you go in seniority, the fuller your calendar gets.

The Problem

Most teams spend far too much time in meetings. Many of these gatherings could easily be replaced by an email or an async update, but it’s hard to measure their real value. We know the feeling of “another wasted meeting,” yet lack a system to track it objectively.

The Hypothesis

If people had a simple way to rate meetings (useful vs. not useful, could have been async, too long, unclear outcomes…), teams could get real data on meeting quality. With that visibility, they could cut unnecessary ones and reclaim valuable time.

The Prototype

Using Lovable, I designed a lightweight prototype:

• Quick feedback screen: After each meeting, participants can anonymously rate it in under 10 seconds (e.g. “Was this useful?” “Could it have been an email?”).
• Meeting health tracker: Each meeting gets a “health score” (red, yellow, green), making it easy to identify which ones consistently underperform.
• Dashboard view: Aggregates ratings into findings like:
  • % of meetings that could be async.
  • Average time saved per month.
  • “Top offenders”. Meetings flagged most often as wasteful.
• Privacy & schedule settings: Ensures feedback feels safe and adapts to the user’s workweek.

Findings

• Just seeing the data (e.g. “67% of meetings could be async”) fosters conversations about meeting culture.
• The “top offenders” list makes it easier to discuss canceling or restructuring recurring meetings.
• Quick rating flow works well. Feedback takes less than 10 seconds, so adoption isn’t a burden.

Reflection

Meetings are one of the biggest hidden costs in modern work. By prototyping this tool, I tested how data can make the invisible visible. Instead of gut feelings, teams get a concrete measure of meeting health, which can help them decide whether to keep it or drop it.

Link to the prototype: https://meeting-scorecard.lovable.app/