WE’VE been having such larks lately pondering the probability of a third world war, Brexit chaos, and what someone’s white wedding dress is going to look like (white, maybe?), that some important news has fallen through the gap.

While you’ve been away in Armageddon/Cloud Cuckoo Land, California has elbowed aside the UK as the world’s fifth largest economy. A US state with a population of 40 million beating a country of 66 million. Even allowing for the presence of wealth generating super sectors such as Silicon Valley and Hollywood, that’s impressive productivity.

If you are in the market for less than impressive productivity, try closer to home. Official figures this week show productivity in Scotland, the value produced for each hour worked, fell for the second year in a row, this time by 1.9%.

We are stuck in the slow lane for many reasons, including lack of investment in training, but we will not get out of it simply by working longer hours. Scotland, like the rest of the UK, has a long hours culture, particularly when it comes to office work. Getting in early and staying late is too often seen as the thing to do to get ahead, or, increasingly, to keep one’s job. In the Seventies, striking used to be called the British disease. Now it is over-working.

Adopting a more modern, enlightened attitude to work would have benefits other than boosting productivity. Who knows, we might even get reacquainted with those folk on the sofa, the ones sitting slumped over iPads and phones by the time you get home. Who are those vaguely familiar looking people? Does anyone know?

Spending less time at work might mean you could take up a hobby, get fit, see friends, generally “live” more. Many say they want to, but still the long days go on. Why? How can we change?

It is at this point that a columnist in Denmark, France, or any of the other legally smug countries at the top of the productivity league table would get stuck into research and call a few experts. But in the new found spirit of working smarter not harder I’m going to propose, off the top of my head, an easy way to boost productivity. To wit, radically reforming meetings, the biggest time wasters in any office; yes, even worse than the bloke who walks around all day with a piece of paper.

There is in fact a growing body of opinion in favour of such an idea (damn the conscientiousness that made me do research after all). Jeff Bezos of Amazon insists on staff setting out ideas in memos, which are read in silence at the beginning of the meeting. PowerPoint presentations are forbidden. Bezos’s fellow billionaire, Elon Musk, tells workers to walk out of meetings if they have ceased to be relevant.

I don’t get invited to a lot of meetings these days. This might be something to do with my being ahead of the Bezos/Musk curve and developing my own progressive approach to office get togethers. This involved a three stage process of closing eyes, sticking fingers in ears, and shouting “La, la, la, I’m not listening!” till someone threw me out. Or at least that’s what I was doing in my imagination. In reality, I simply adopted a face like a skelped backside. A very bored, slightly frightening, skelped backside.

Obviously not everyone can adopt this strategy. Some folk have to be the grown-ups in the room. Even they could benefit from my next suggestion on how to make meetings more efficient. Admit it, the culture of meetings is too stuffy, all that “Sorry to interrupt” this and “With respect” that. And the sobriety! Meetings ought to be more like middle class dinner parties, the kind you see on Doctor Foster, where people get hopelessly drunk and start telling some home truths. Imagine the fun of a meeting where contributions started with “And as for YOU...” What giggles as secrets were spilled like red wine, and long held grudges roared into the open.

The meeting could stop if violence breaks out, though keep an open mind on this. A bit of exercise during the working day can do wonders for productivity, not to mention the old waistline.

Other suggestions: forget standing meetings, which are old hat now, and have jogging meetings. Everyone hates running, so business will be done and dusted quickly. If you can manage to be on “any other business” by the time you reach Greggs, so much the better.

But for a truly radical solution to the problem of meetings, why not ban them? Trust me. No one will notice. If it makes you feel better, have a meeting about banning meetings. I guarantee it will be the most well attended, cheerful get together ever held. Might even come along myself.