# 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.

- Topic: Meetings
- Framework: Few-Shot
- Level: Advanced
- Tags: Meetings, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/decide-whether-this-meeting-needs-to-happen-or-can-be-handled-async

## Prompt

```text
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.
```

## 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

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.