WORK IS WHAT WE DO BETWEEN MEETINGS. That is Professor Munger's best riposte to the REMFs. In a related post, he suggests that compulsive meeting-organizers pay for the privilege. Now comes a productivity tool to do just that.

Free time on workplace calendars is available for all to see and reserve.

That's why Mike Monteiro came up with meeting tokens - bumblebee-colored poker chips good for 15 minutes of a colleague's attention, inscribed with a warning, “Don't Waste My Time.” Monteiro, the director of San Francisco-based Mule Design Studio, designed the tokens after tiring of disorganized and lengthy office meetings.

“I think this actually could work,” he says, although he hasn't used them in his office. In his utopian vision, workers would receive a pack of tokens each Monday. A 30-minute meeting with two colleagues would cost four tokens; an hour-long call with 12 folks from three department: an unaffordable 48 tokens. Some bags would contain the prized Red Merlin, which ends any meeting on the spot, no questions asked, with its imposing slogan: “We're DONE Here.”

That token is named for Merlin Mann, part of a new generation of productivity gurus who have moved far beyond the File-o-Fax and color-coded folders of the workplace of yore.

Mann has attracted a following among “knowledge workers” with an empowering message: your time and attention are scarce and valuable, so give them away wisely. (How to tell a knowledge worker? Smooth hands and an ability to take lunch whenever, Mann says.)

The article includes a number of suggestions short of holding a Demsetz auction for meeting organizers, some of which reinforce the Mungowitz Block characterization of e-mail, instant communication, and all the other ways to hold a meeting on the spot that leave people saddled with tasks that others think are urgent (for the moment) but which are not important. I've touched on some of these before, such as in this review of Never Check E-Mail in the Morning,