Do you ever feel like you spend half your day in meetings that quite honestly accomplish very little.

Have you ever been sitting in your office, excited about this new idea you have to save production costs, ideas are flowing, you are jotting down notes, creating an outline and a plan, but then comes that knock at the door, and that voice that calls your name reminding you of that meeting in three minutes.

You're thinking.... seriously, now?

And you know what's worst: you don't really even know what this meeting is about.

Have you seen this:

Apparently nobody else in the company has any real work to get done.

Yet there appears to be an abundance of time for fake work.

Sitting in meetings without clear direction and an agenda is consider "fake work."

Real work equates to accomplishing tasks that will lead to accomplishing goals like reaching sales quotas or something else worthwhile.

Fake work? Well simply put, is a considerable chunk of wasted time that consumes useful resources.

There are steps we can employ, however, to avoid this counter-productive time-killing trend that seems to happen on a regular basis.

For starters, learn to say "no."

If we are really busy or inundated with important and time-sensitive matters, it really is ok to say "no" to a meeting.

Next, feel free to ask questions like: is this meeting essential for me?

And for those email invitations, that button you never click that says tentative - click that one every once in a while.

(By the way, it is right next to the accept button.)

Fight the impulse to click accept, and don't allow meetings to prioritize your day (especially the ones that have no agenda attached).

Now, go have a productive day and get some real work done.