Anyone who knows me knows that I hate meetings. We all spend too much time sitting around talking about stuff we should be doing instead of actually doing stuff. More often than not, any information required can be either decided by an individual with authority and the groups’ trust or acquired via a quick email or instant message.

Nevertheless, sometimes there are so many moving parts that the emails start flying. You’re replying to an email at the same time someone else is, and all of a sudden, everyone is confused. That’s when I stop everything I’m doing and pick up the damn phone. That just happened to me. Too many emails, too many people, too many elements — so I picked up the phone.

And then it dawned on me — there has to be a formula to this. After some doodling and calling upon high school physics, here’s what I came up with:

m

The number of people involved in the conversation, including yourself (in other words, mass)

e

The number of emails sent by all of those people, including those you’ve sent yourself

t

The amount of time in which all of those emails were sent, measured in minutes

Plug in the numbers. If the above formula is indeed true — the left side is greater than or equal to the right side — then you probably need to pick up the phone or have a meeting. Clearly, if there is that much to say, then you need to talk. Or if everyone is so unfocused that they are just sending short emails pretending to be involved, then you need to get everyone together and get focused.

Every scenario I’ve plugged into this formula seems to work. Does it work for you?