Friends, colleagues and longstanding clients will be aware of my views on meetings: be they for briefings, negotiations, training or any other purpose, they should be limited to two hours. Max.

If, that is, they’re really necessary at all.

My reasoning: if an issue can’t be resolved in two hours, it won’t be resolved in ten. Consequently, I’ve spent the last two weeks days in a procession of… two hour meetings. That’s all well and good – for anyone who has a posse of support staff to ‘look after the store’ in their absence. I, alas, do not.

Thus I was delighted today to find validation in a most unlikely quarter. Not through the musings of a business mentor or time management coach; but in a Sunday Times column written by no less a luminary than Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, wherein he observed

“All [meetings] – with no exceptions – are a complete and utter waste of everyone’s time. Show me someone who goes to a lot of meetings and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t have a proper job.

“All the great inventions and great leadership choices come from the mind of one egomaniac who then gets the job done. Everything after the initial idea is formulated can be achieved by email.

“Meetings are where good ideas get watered down and bad ideas are forced along because no one ever has the courage to stand up and say: What the bloody hell are we doing here?’”

Quite.

Of course, you may disagree – in which case, please ‘schedule some face time’ to discuss the matter.

With someone else.

We’re told, daily, how the Internet has transformed business for the better – streamlining processes, enhancing communications, empowering consumers… and on and on.

There is, however, a downside.

In my far from humble opinion, the Internet has contributed, directly, to a rapid decline in linguistic standards, accuracy, care… and, dare I say it, even creativity: a consequence of the tendency among many agencies to employ interactivity for its own sake – often at the expense of usability.

With 80% – 90% of our own work coming from ‘online’ we are probably no less guilty.

Though my colleagues and I pride ourselves on our ‘old school’ professionalism, we are constantly called upon to compromise our principles to meet ever more demanding (and almost invariably arbitrary) deadlines.

By accelerating the pace of business life to near breaking point – and by eliminating the time zone issues which previously allowed international firms like ours at least a modicum of time to draw breath – the wide adoption of the web means we now value speed and economy about all things.

In the heady pre-Google, pre-iStock days, we had time – between the creation of Draft One and the Final Presentation – to let the subconscious work its magic: to add that ‘certain something’ which can make all the difference, in terms of the design itself and the results it delivers.

But nowadays – with deadlines marked on watches rather than calendars – quality is simply bound to suffer.

Most saddening is the fact that – in the drive towards instant gratification – no one seems to notice.

Or care.