Have you ever experienced the frustration of an aimless, meandering, long winding work meeting. Each and everyone has far better things to do, so there is no point remaining stuck in a room past the time the conversation remained useful. A meeting is never meant to be a lullaby aimed at putting you to sleep, or disrupt the rest of your schedule.
Stereotype
The assembly of busy professionals calls for quick dissemination of important information, in a clear and concise manner, getting back to work is a priority, it better be ASAP. Don’t despair, there are ways and means that may be employed to avoid running a stereotype useless and hopeless meeting.
Nip in The Bud
Can you pinpoint the biggest distraction in a meeting, well that happens to be your cell phone as well as those of our colleagues. No meeting requires cell phone usage per se, and there is no reason why people need to glance time and again at their screen. The phone problem needs to be nipped in the bud, once and for all.
Zone Out
A cell phone stacking policy needs to be rolled out and strictly enforced. Essentially it is a 
convention where people agree to stack their phones, this goes on to encourage conversation and discourages phone habits which border on being toxic anti social behavior. It leads to focusing on the objectives at hand, which in turn, leads to your contributing to certain topics, that you might have have zoned out for sure.
Impactful
Ensure the phones are put on silent mode before the all important meeting commences. It makes eminent sense to keep the meeting short and effective, the best meetings do not extend unduly, on the contrary they are quickly wrapped up and that makes them all the more impactful. Most meetings can be easily wrapped in around fifteen to twenty minutes at the maximum.
The Tangents
This time limit forces the participants to make succinct contributions, while keeping the tangents to a minimum. You can prepare for short meetings well ahead of time, along with requisite materials. Human nature is governed by the optimal attention span of around 10 to 20 minutes at a single stretch, beyond that the mind tends to wander listlessly.
A Sense of Progress
With this approach things get done at a faster pace and are crossed of the list accordingly. When 
you head towards the end of the meeting, a sense of progress is experienced, and all participants leave the meeting with a sense of accomplishment and the meeting time well spent.
Written Agenda
You need to set a written agenda to accomplish the same. It nips aimlessness in the bud and curbs unwanted tangents, provided it is circulated amongst the participants half an hour to one hour before the meeting, this allows ample time for the participants to prepare the requisite information.
Stand Up Meeting
You may also consider conducting a stand up meeting, which takes some steam off the mental discomfort of enduring long meetings by channelizing the energy to physical discomfort, this is especially true of awful meetings. The very act of standing up gives people a real sense urgency.
Effective Conclusion
It boosts excitement around creative exercises and processes while reducing the natural tendency of people to defend their turf. Consider allowing an outsider to take charge, who works without bias to turn every major point in discussion into a key action or an effective conclusion for that matter.
Final Words
These people conduct meetings in an unbiased manner, without any self interest or ulterior motive whatsoever. Outsiders help in conducting the best possible discussion. A quick recap would get everybody on the same page with regards to the next steps to be taken, the expectations and the accomplishments. Such short meetings would definitely encourage positive teamwork and minimize waste of time as well as enhance productivity.
