Conference calls are the worst.

Since the advent of the cell phone, people don’t have to be in their offices to talk to you. In many ways, this is terrific. I have a nifty hands-free set-up in my car, and I get a lot done on road trips to and from the airport. But that freedom has a downside, and it’s the waning ability of people to stay engaged on a phone call of any duration.

And the biggest time suck is, say it with me, conference calls. I complain about them, you complain about them, but somehow they keep showing up on our schedules. I don’t know what the mathematical formula is, but I bet you there’s some kind of ratio that can demonstrate, with each person added to a call, the decreasing engagement of the group.

What happens on an average conference call? The first mistake is that we treat conference calls like they are in-person meetings. Essentially, even though the physical circumstances of everyone in the room are different, we behave as if we were meeting in the same room. We don’t establish any virtual gathering place, and we haven’t done a good job of acknowledging that we need to have different rules for virtual meetings than for in-person ones. Instead we just wait until everyone is breathing into the same weird void and launch our agendas.

Assuming that no one reading this has the unilateral power to stop this massive time wastage (although hey, if that’s you, could you make that happen?), let’s talk about some ways to pump up your own engagement in the conference calls of your life.

First, think about your intention. What do you need to make happen on this call? What’s at stake for you? What change do you need to effect? If the answer is “Seriously, nothing, I don’t know why I have to be on this call,” hit that mute button and get started reading your favorite blogs, cleaning out your inbox, paying bills, or whatever you need to do to reclaim your time.