The cursor flickered, a tiny, defiant beacon against the relentless grid of faces. It was 2:01 PM, and my 51st minute on what felt like the 51st Zoom call of the week. Twelve pixelated versions of colleagues stared back, though ‘stared’ felt generous. Two were animatedly discussing a project timeline, three looked vaguely attentive, and the remaining six – let’s be honest – were likely lost in the labyrinth of their inboxes, their eyes betraying their true focus, darting off-screen like startled birds. My own fingers twitched, a phantom itch to open another tab, just to *do* something concrete.

This isn’t just about wasted time. This is about a slow, insidious cultural rot.

We’ve traded the quiet hum of genuine productivity for a high-stakes, perpetual performance. We call it ‘collaboration’ or ‘synergy’ or ‘alignment,’ but too often, it’s just productivity theater – an elaborate stage play where everyone performs busyness, mistaking activity for output, presence for progress. The script is familiar: endless meetings about the work, so many meetings, in fact, that there’s precious little time left for the actual work itself.

The Performer’s Dilemma

I’m thinking about Theo J.-P., a safety compliance auditor I met a while back. His job, at its core, is about mitigating risk, ensuring processes are safe and people are protected. But he found himself drowning not in hazards, but in documentation. ‘I’d spend 71% of my week in meetings *about* audit findings,’ he told me, ‘then another 11% preparing presentations *for* those meetings. The actual time I had to observe, to analyze, to make a meaningful impact on the ground? Maybe 11 hours, if I was lucky on a good week.’

My own recent moment of digital chaos, when I accidentally closed all 11 of my active browser tabs – tabs meticulously arranged for different projects, different research threads – felt like a physical manifestation of this very problem. The instant panic, the sense of losing crucial connections, mirrored the way I sometimes feel after a particularly performative meeting: exhausted, disoriented, and realizing I’ve just lost an hour without actually building anything lasting. It’s not just the tabs; it’s the mental context, the flow, the momentum that gets shattered. The energy spent frantically reopening tabs, trying to re-establish the environment, is energy stolen from genuine creation. It’s like being forced to reconstruct the stage set between every single act, rather than focusing on the performance itself.

The Meeting as Product

The contrarian angle here isn’t to abolish meetings. That’s a naive and impractical stance. The problem isn’t the meeting itself; it’s that the meeting has become the *product*, not a pathway to it. It’s transformed into a substitute for making decisions, taking action, and holding people accountable. We schedule an hour-long call to ‘discuss’ an issue that could be resolved with a 1-minute decision, or a 1-line email. We invite 11 people when 2 or 3 are truly critical. Why? Because it feels safe. It feels collaborative. It creates a paper trail (or a digital recording trail). It’s a performance of diligence, a public demonstration of engagement, training our most capable people to become passive spectators in their own jobs, waiting for the next cue.

Consider a business like Floor Coverings International of Southeast Knoxville. Their model, in essence, is designed to bypass this very productivity theater for their clients. Instead of making a homeowner attend a series of meetings, drive to 11 different showrooms, and navigate a complex, often overwhelming selection process, they bring the showroom directly to the client’s door. The focus isn’t on the performative steps – the endless browsing, the back-and-forth scheduling – but on the tangible outcome: a beautiful, perfectly installed floor that meets specific needs. Their success relies on delivering a result efficiently and pleasantly, not on parading the numerous steps involved. A good Flooring Contractor understands that the value is in the transformation, not in the administrative journey. This outcome-first approach is the antithesis of productivity theater. It’s about solving a real problem with minimal friction, maximum impact.

Shifting the Gaze

We need to shift our gaze from the stage to the scoreboard. What tangible problem was solved in the last 61 minutes? What specific decision was made? What concrete action was committed to, and by whom? This isn’t about being ruthlessly efficient; it’s about being genuinely effective. It’s about cultivating a culture where the courage to make a decision, even a small 1, is celebrated more than the ability to simply attend a meeting about making a decision.

Theo, after months of frustration, started blocking out 21-minute ‘deep work’ sprints, treating them as non-negotiable appointments. He began sending 1-page summaries *before* meetings, asking for decisions or specific inputs rather than open-ended discussions. He challenged the default assumption of ‘more is better’ when it came to attendees.

There’s a subtle, almost unconscious draw to productivity theater. It feels like we’re contributing. We’re seen. We’re part of the conversation. It offers a convenient, if ultimately hollow, sense of accomplishment. But the real satisfaction, the profound impact, comes not from playing a role, but from building something enduring. It comes from the quiet moments of creation, the bold strokes of decision, the disciplined execution that happens when the curtain is down and the spotlight is off. The crucial, unspoken question we need to ask ourselves, not just once but repeatedly, is this: are we here to perform, or are we here to produce?