If I feel your meeting is relevant to me, I&#x27;m listening and you don&#x27;t have to worry about banning laptops.  If you don&#x27;t think i&#x27;m capable of deciding whether a meeting is relevant to me, fire me because I&#x27;m bloody incompetent.<p>If your meeting is not relevant to me, I&#x27;ll try to get out my laptop and get some actual work done while my time is being wasted or if we meander into areas that are not of relevance.<p>If you ban laptops, and for some bizarre reason I still have to attend and your meeting is not interesting to me, i&#x27;ll code on bloody pen and paper and enter some of that code into the computer once I get back to my desk, or i&#x27;ll try to do SOMETHING productive.  Trust me, you don&#x27;t magically have my cognitive attention...<p>I had a consultant&#x2F;workmate try to ban laptops in her meetings.  No prizes for guessing whether I think it was the laptops or the meetings (or the consultant) that were the far bigger waste of time&#x2F;attention&#x2F;money...<p>Hire competent people and let them decide what the best use of their time is...or at least admit that you think its justified treating other&#x27;s in the workplace like children...