"I'm too busy doing various things".
Yes indeed. I used that strategy myself for years. I made it work by violating the 'never volunteer' rule. I volunteered for 'various' meaningless, rarely necessary jobs that I could always claim needed attention when meetings came along. That was my purpose. To avoid the agony of longwinded, repetitive, tome wasting meetings. And the plan worked VERY well. I've been retired since 2004 and am still extremely proud of the success of that plan.