Maybe This Google Doc Should Have Been a Meeting -- Or How Inefficient Work Can Be in 2026.
Like many people working a desk job, I’ve been known to lament the never-ending stream of emails, texts, Slacks, WhatsApps, Signals, DMs (LinkedIn! Facebook! Instagram!), Teams, Hangouts, blah blah blahs that define much of contemporary work.
On a typical workday, I devote much of my time keeping up with the parade of messages that I need to respond to, and engaging in small celebrations when I can just delete or ignore something.
But I recently realized that a bigger scourge on work–on measures of both time and productivity–is Google Docs.
Once upon a time–and now I feel every one of my 50 years–we used Microsoft Word to create documents. One person would be the main author. That person would figure out ahead of time who else needed to review the document and–critically–understand and articulate the kind of feedback each person needed to give, and when, in the process of said document’s creation.
This allowed for something we are sorely and surely missing today–version control. Reviewing and editing a document in this distant, ancient world was somewhat orderly and streamlined. People generally knew not just that they had to review something, but why and to what end.
Today I see too many of my colleagues creating a Google Doc and then inviting gobs of people–qualified and not–to help draft the document and otherwise weigh in on it. ALL AT THE SAME TIME. There is rarely a deadline for getting the document done.
The result, more often than not, is an indecipherable set of in-line edits, and scores of comments–and then replies to comments and replies to replies to comments.
Then, inevitably, a comment thread becomes a place where a couple of people are debating important details of a topic or strategy. And making important decisions! In a Google Doc comment thread! And likely not telling anyone else about it!
I don’t love meetings for the sake of meetings, but big debates and related decisions should be done in a meeting and not in a comment thread.
And don’t get me started on the “Tabs” function, where people can replicate the same document at will, over and over again, with slight tweaks or changes. Version control? Never heard of it.
Of course, all of the things I’m ranting about could be avoided with clear rules of the road when it comes to using Google Docs. But too many of us have crept into this mindset that makes us think we are being productive, and strategic, and collaborative, and equitable by creating a document, opening it up to the world, engaging in comment threads, and perpetually raising new questions about settled decisions.
If any of this resonates, take a step back and commit to mapping out a review process and order before you share your latest Google Doc. If you can manage that well you’ll likely save yourself and your colleagues a big collaborative headache. And likely make work a little less inefficient.
At the very least, please promise me you’ll never make real decisions in a comment thread!
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