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Could've Been an Email

The definitive meeting-to-email conversion tool.

The Problem

Every year, millions of hours are spent in meetings that could have been emails. We didn't make that statistic up, but we also didn't verify it, which makes it approximately as reliable as anything else you will read today.

Could've Been an Email uses a proprietary email-equivalence scoring model to calculate, with false precision, exactly how many emails any given meeting was worth.

The Formula

Our Email Equivalence Score (EES) is derived from five primary variables: meeting duration, attendee count, decision outcomes, language markers (specifically the phrase "let's take this offline"), and whether someone shared their screen to show a document that could have been attached to an email.

The formula was developed over a period of approximately forty-five minutes and has not been peer reviewed. We stand by it regardless.

Use Cases

Could've Been an Email is used by professionals who need quantitative evidence to support the feeling they have had since 9am. The output is not suitable for HR complaints, performance reviews, or any official communication. It is, however, satisfying.

Our Position on Meetings

We do not oppose all meetings. Some meetings are necessary. Those meetings exist. They are not, in our experience, the ones you are calculating right now.