Reference

Meeting Cost Glossary

The definitive reference for meeting cost terminology — including the original Clock Vocabulary coined for this site, and 60+ plain-English definitions of standard meeting and productivity terms.

Clock Vocabulary

ORIGINAL

clockburnnoun/klɒk.bɜːn/

The total salary cost consumed by a meeting, expressed as a dollar figure that burns in real time as the clock ticks.

"After running the calculator, she realized the weekly standup had a clockburn of $4,200 per month."

Standard Meeting & Productivity Terms

Action item — A specific task assigned to a named person with a deadline, arising from a meeting discussion.

Agenda — A written list of topics to be discussed in a meeting, distributed in advance.

All-hands meeting — A company-wide meeting in which all employees are expected to attend, typically led by senior leadership.

Async communication — Communication that does not require all parties to be present simultaneously — email, Slack messages, recorded video.

Attendee cost — The total salary cost of all participants in a meeting for its duration.

Blocker — An obstacle preventing a team member from completing a task; commonly surfaced in daily standups.

Brainstorming session — A meeting format designed to generate ideas freely, without immediate evaluation or criticism.

Burn rate — The rate at which a company or meeting consumes budget, typically expressed per hour or per minute.

Calendar debt — The backlog of productive work that accumulates when meetings dominate a team's schedule.

Cadence — The regular rhythm or frequency of a recurring meeting (e.g., weekly, bi-weekly, monthly).

Check-in — A brief, structured meeting — often 15 minutes or less — to share status updates and surface blockers.

Consensus decision — A decision reached when all meeting participants agree, or at least do not actively object.

Daily standup — A brief daily meeting (typically 15 minutes) in which team members share what they did yesterday, what they'll do today, and any blockers.

Decision fatigue — The deteriorating quality of decisions made after a long sequence of meetings or choices.

Deep work — Cognitively demanding, distraction-free work that produces high-value output — the primary casualty of excessive meetings.

Deliverable — A tangible output or outcome committed to in a meeting.

Effective meeting — A meeting that achieves its stated objective within its allotted time, with clear action items and owners.

Engagement — The degree to which meeting participants are actively contributing rather than passively attending.

Facilitator — The person responsible for guiding a meeting's discussion, keeping it on agenda, and ensuring all voices are heard.

Follow-up — Actions taken after a meeting to implement decisions, distribute notes, or complete assigned tasks.

Headcount — The number of people attending a meeting; a primary variable in calculating meeting cost.

Hybrid meeting — A meeting in which some participants are physically present and others join remotely.

Ground rules — Agreed-upon norms for meeting behavior — phones away, one speaker at a time, start and end on time.

Ice-breaker — A short activity at the start of a meeting designed to warm up participants and build rapport.

Information radiator — A visible display (physical or digital) that broadcasts project status to all stakeholders, reducing the need for status-update meetings.

Kickoff meeting — The first meeting of a project, used to align stakeholders on goals, scope, timeline, and responsibilities.

Lean meeting — A meeting run with minimal waste: tight agenda, only essential attendees, and a clear end state.

Meeting audit — A systematic review of all recurring meetings to assess their value, cost, and whether they should continue.

Meeting cost — The total salary expense of all attendees for the duration of a meeting, often including overhead multipliers.

Meeting fatigue — Physical and cognitive exhaustion caused by an excessive number of meetings, particularly video calls.

Meeting minutes — A written record of what was discussed, decided, and assigned in a meeting.

Meeting overhead — The indirect costs of a meeting beyond raw salary: preparation time, follow-up time, context-switching recovery.

Micromeeting — An informal, unscheduled conversation of 5 minutes or less that resolves a question or decision.

No-meeting day — A designated day of the week on which no meetings are scheduled, protecting blocks of deep work time.

One-on-one (1:1) — A regular private meeting between a manager and a direct report, focused on feedback, development, and relationship-building.

Opportunity cost — The value of the work that could have been completed during the time spent in a meeting.

Overhead multiplier — A factor (typically 1.25–1.4×) applied to base salary to account for benefits, taxes, and overhead when calculating true meeting cost.

Parking lot — A designated space (physical or virtual) to capture off-topic ideas or questions for later discussion.

Pre-read — A document distributed before a meeting to bring all attendees to a common baseline of information.

Productive meeting — A meeting that generates decisions, alignment, or creative output that could not have been achieved asynchronously.

Quorum — The minimum number of attendees required for a meeting to proceed or for a decision to be valid.

Recurring meeting — A meeting that repeats on a fixed schedule — daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

Remote meeting — A meeting conducted entirely via video or audio conferencing, with no participants in the same physical location.

ROI of a meeting — The return on investment of a meeting: the value of decisions or outputs generated relative to the salary cost incurred.

Salary cost — The direct compensation expense of meeting attendees, calculated as (annual salary ÷ 2,080 hours) × meeting duration × attendee count.

Sprint planning — A meeting at the start of a development sprint in which the team selects and estimates work from the backlog.

Stakeholder — Any person with an interest in a project's outcome; often used to justify large meeting attendee lists.

Status update meeting — A meeting whose primary purpose is sharing information that could have been communicated via email or a written report.

Synchronous communication — Communication requiring all parties to be present simultaneously — the defining characteristic of a meeting.

Timeboxing — Allocating a fixed, maximum amount of time to a meeting or agenda item, after which discussion ends regardless of completion.

Town hall — A large-format meeting (often company-wide) in which leadership presents updates and employees can ask questions.

Update meeting — A meeting whose sole purpose is sharing information that could be communicated via a written report or async message.

Video call fatigue — The specific exhaustion caused by prolonged video conferencing, attributed to constant self-monitoring, reduced mobility, and eye contact intensity.

Walking meeting — A meeting conducted while walking, shown to increase creativity and reduce meeting length.

Working session — A meeting in which participants actively produce output together, rather than merely discussing or reporting.

Workshop — A structured, facilitated meeting designed to produce a specific output — a decision, a design, or a plan — through collaborative exercises.

Yield — In meeting context, the productive output generated relative to the time and salary cost invested.

Zero-agenda meeting — A meeting called without a defined agenda; widely considered the leading cause of unproductive meeting time.

Zoom fatigue — Colloquial term for video call fatigue, named after the Zoom platform; characterized by exhaustion after back-to-back video meetings.