Decide whether this meeting needs to happen or can be handled async
Tests a planned or recurring meeting against clear criteria and recommends meet, shorten, go async, or cancel, with the message to send.
The prompt
Help me decide whether this meeting really needs to happen.
Meeting purpose as stated in the invite: [PASTE INVITE OR DESCRIBE]
Attendees and their roles: [LIST]
Length and frequency: [e.g. "60 min, one-off" / "30 min weekly"]
What happened last time (if recurring): [BRIEF NOTES]
My role: [organizer / attendee / my manager's meeting]
Test it against these questions:
- Is there a decision to make, a problem to solve together, or a relationship to build? Or is it mainly sharing information?
- Does it need real-time back-and-forth, or could people respond in writing?
- Does every attendee need to be there, or only for part of it?
- Is the needed input or pre-work ready, or will the meeting stall?
- What is the cost in people-hours (attendees x length x frequency)? Use only the numbers I gave; do not invent salaries or rates.
- What breaks if it does not happen?
Return:
1. Recommendation: Meet as planned / Meet but shorter or with fewer people / Replace with an async update / Cancel. Give a one-line reason.
2. A one-line answer to each question above, showing how it pushed the recommendation.
3. If it should still happen: a tighter purpose statement, the right attendee list, and the right length.
4. If not: what to do instead (e.g. email, Teams or Slack thread, shared doc with comments, a 10-minute call between two people).
5. A short, polite message I can send to the organizer or attendees proposing the change. If I am not the organizer, keep it suggestive, not presumptuous.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Meetings prompts
What to fill in
- PASTE INVITE OR DESCRIBE
- LIST
- e.g. "60 min, one-off" / "30 min weekly"
- BRIEF NOTES
- organizer / attendee / my manager's meeting
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
Related prompts
- Write a meeting invitation with a clear purpose and agendaDrafts a calendar invite that says why the meeting exists, what will be decided, and how to prepare.
- Turn my meeting notes into structured minutesConverts rough notes into clean, item-by-item team meeting minutes with attendees, discussion, decisions, and actions.
- Turn a meeting transcript into a one-page executive briefCondenses a long meeting or transcript into a short brief or update a busy executive can read in two minutes.
- Turn emails and documents into a one-page brief before my meetingReads the background material you paste and gives you everything you need to know before your next meeting on one page.