Why recurring meetings outlive their purpose
Every recurring meeting was a good idea once. The problem is that the good idea expires and the calendar entry does not.
They are created under different conditions than they run under
A weekly sync gets set up during a period when there is something to sync about: a launch, a reorganisation, a problem. The cadence matches the situation.
Then the situation ends and the meeting does not, because cancelling it requires someone to decide it is no longer needed and to say so, and nobody is assigned that. So it continues at a cadence that was calibrated for a crisis that is over.
Nobody wants to be the one who cancels
Cancelling a recurring meeting reads as a judgement about the people in it, or about whoever set it up. Keeping it costs an hour a week of other people's time, which is diffuse and shows up on nobody's plate.
This is why they accumulate rather than turn over. The cost of creating one is borne by the creator for two minutes; the cost of keeping one is borne by everyone else, forever.
Find a time with a poll
Propose a few slots, share one link and let the group vote. Guests don't need an account.
What a weekly meeting costs in a year
An hour a week with eight people is roughly fifty working days a year. Put that way, most teams would want to know what it is producing.
The version that hurts is the recurring meeting that is only sometimes needed. It runs every week so it is there when it matters, which means most weeks it is people confirming there is nothing to discuss, and paying the context-switch cost to do so.
Review them once a quarter
Once a quarter, list the recurring meetings, and for each one ask what decision it produced in the last month. Not what was discussed, but what was decided or changed.
Anything with no answer gets one of three outcomes: halve the frequency, shorten it, or cancel it and replace it with a written update. Say up front that cancelling is a normal outcome and not a criticism, because otherwise nothing gets cancelled.
Set the expiry when you create it
The cleanest fix is upstream. When you set up a recurring meeting, give it an end date, six or eight weeks out, and renew it deliberately if it is still earning its place.
Renewal is a much easier decision than cancellation. One is a small yes, the other is a public no, and that asymmetry is the whole reason these things survive as long as they do.