The "2-Week Lookback" Rule

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Your calendar is full. Every day, back-to-back meetings. Some are valuable. Most are... fine. A few are complete time sinks.

But when's the last time you actually looked at your calendar and asked: "Which of these meetings should I delete?"

If you're like most founders, the answer is never.

Meetings multiply like rabbits. Someone suggests a "quick sync." It becomes a weekly recurring event. Three months later, you're still having that sync, even though the original reason for it is long gone.

Meanwhile, your calendar is a graveyard of zombie meetings—technically alive, but serving no real purpose.

The 2-Week Lookback Rule fixes this: Every two weeks, review your calendar and kill at least one meeting.

Let me tell you about Amir, founder of an 8-person marketing agency.

Amir was drowning in meetings:

Total: 18+ hours of meetings per week.

Amir had maybe 12 hours left for actual work. He was constantly behind, working nights and weekends to catch up.

One day, his coach asked him: "If you could only keep half your meetings, which ones would you choose?"

Amir paused. Half? That would be chaos... wouldn't it?

So they ran an experiment. For two weeks, Amir tracked every meeting and rated it:

The results were brutal:

Amir was spending 14 hours a week in meetings that didn't need to happen.

He started the 2-Week Lookback practice:

New meeting total: 8 hours/week.

Amir got back 10 hours. His stress dropped. His output increased.

"I thought I needed all those meetings to stay aligned. Turns out, most of them were just performative. We already had alignment—we were just talking about having alignment."

Meetings have a lifecycle:

Someone says, "Let's have a quick sync to align on this project."

You agree. A meeting is scheduled.

After the first meeting, someone says, "This was helpful. Let's do this weekly."

You agree. It becomes a recurring calendar event.

The project ends. The original need disappears. But the meeting keeps happening because nobody explicitly killed it.

Think of meetings like subscriptions. They auto-renew until you cancel them.

Most founders never cancel.

Big companies can afford bloated calendars. They have middle managers whose job is literally "attend meetings."

Microteams can't.

For microteams, every meeting hour is an hour not spent on:

High-leverage teams protect maker time. Low-leverage teams fill calendars with manager theater.

The 2-Week Lookback Rule ensures your calendar stays lean, focused, and useful.

Here's how to implement this practice: