Want to make me cringe and grimace? Ask me to attend an “informational” meeting. These are those anti-productivity meetings that invite everyone to talk. Without any particular purpose! They invoke the worst of all Treadmill Verbs™: inform. Inform, like all Treadmill Verbs™, has no destination. You can inform forever. There is no way to know when you are done!

During informational meetings, the most disciplined and earnest groups excel at taking turns and limiting their talk to a couple of minutes each. Nevertheless, no one really knows what to talk about. So they use their two minutes in a variety of ways:

• To share recent activities
• To justify paychecks – particularly those most insecure about what they have accomplished
• To blend in so no one asks difficult or probing questions
• To be funny, whether out of boredom, habit, protest, or an alternative to thinking of something meaningful to say
• To impress – especially those who seize every opportunity to do so
• To whine – often about problems that never seem to go away
• To seize the soapbox and lobby for a cause

Meanwhile, before and after reporting (ugh! – another terrible, horrible Treadmill Verb™), what are people doing? They are trying to be productive! They are cleaning out their inboxes, texting, and trying to make deadlines. Those attending remotely push mute while they talk with employees, care for children and pets, prepare lunch, use the restroom, and take out the trash. They are all listening, of course. With half an ear, whatever that means since none have more than one brain.

An occasional question makes everyone feel better about the time consumed by these periodic meetings. But if you quizzed participants afterward, they would identify very few concrete outcomes and there would be just about zero agreement on any of those identified outcomes.

Informational meetings are incredible time wasters. They exist out of habit and fear. Employees who’ve endured them throughout their careers, step right in and run their own as soon as they become bosses. Few dare to discontinue this ritual because they aren’t certain what they would be giving up. Having never understood the value, they figure everyone else has been benefiting more than they. If they simply stop holding informational meetings, who knows what dreadful thing could come to pass simply because people didn’t hear each other’s weekly ramblings!

So here is my admonition to you: Stop informing! Stop issuing open invitations to talk. If you want to inform, write an email.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should cancel your informational meetings. What it does mean is that you, and every participant, needs greater clarity of purpose. No one should be fishing around for something to say. Outlaw all Treadmill Verbs™ like inform, report, review, discuss, update, chat, and touch base. Instead, speak the language of tangible outcomes. Speak in terms of specific plans, decisions, and problems. What do you need to move your plans, decisions, and problems forward?

You have plans. Your coworkers have plans. Plans represent tangible outcomes because they are comprised of concrete components that pave the road to tangible results. Do you need input for your plans? Things like action items, resources, or confirmation that you have all the major bases covered? Do you need approval to implement? Do you need to know if your plans are going to screw up someone else’s plans? Do you need to know if someone else’s plans are going to screw up yours? Do you need help identifying risks? Pursue answers to specific questions and you will make tangible progress. Simply report with little sense of purpose and you will have lots of talking, less than half of your audience’s attention, and little to show for your effort.

This article first appeared on Forbes, June 20th, 2017.