We need to talk about meetings
Updated: 5 days ago
How meetings are quietly sabotaging focus and what to do about it
How much uninterrupted focus time do you get each day at work? For many people, the answer is "not enough".
With diaries filled with meetings, the only way to get important work done is to squeeze it into whatever gaps remain, or complete it outside normal working hours.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
According to Microsoft’s 2025 Workplace Trends report 68% of workers say they don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time. The average employee spends nearly two thirds of their time in meetings, their inbox or chat messages.
This isn't poor time management. It's about how work is structured and, in many organisations, meetings sit at the heart of the problem.
Meetings: the biggest thief of focus
Since COVID19 made online meetings the norm, the number of meetings has tripled. What was once reserved for important discussions has become a default mode of communication. Even quick questions arrive as calendar invites.
The average employee now spends about 11 hours a week in meetings, almost a third of the working week. Many attend 3 or more every day. But the real issue isn’t the number of meetings. It's when they happen. A handful of well-planned meetings can leave plenty of time for focused work. The problem arises when meetings become scattered throughout the day, leaving little uninterrupted time for meaningful progress.
Meetings are becoming the greatest thief of focus time
The maker-manager mismatch
More than half of meetings take place during peak focus hours, typically mid-morning and early afternoon (Microsoft, 2025).
This highlights a deeper issue: managers and 'makers' work in fundamentally different ways (Graham, 2009).
Managers rely on meetings to stay informed, troubleshoot issues and check on progress. Their days naturally fill with conversations. Meetings are how they fulfil their role, the rhythm of back-to-back meetings suits them.
Makers (researchers, consultants, programmers, designers) do not organise their work this way. Technical work requires long, uninterrupted stretches of time to think.
To solve problems, create or design things, Makers need long, uninterrupted blocks of time.
A morning broken by a 10am meeting isn't really two hours of focused time. It's fragments of time that are often too short to make any meaningful progress.
Coaching clients regularly tell me that when a meeting sits in the middle of a potential focus window, they won't start anything substantial. Instead they fill the time with emails, admin or other low value tasks until the meeting begins.
So while managers see alignment and progress, makers experience interruption and lost momentum.
Over time, that creates tension and can lead to people working longer hours just to get core work done.
What to do about it
If you're a Maker:
Support your brain to do the kind of work your role requires. For many people that means:
speaking to your manager about protecting regular time for concentrated work
asking to move meetings away from peak focus times
protecting 1-2 hour focus blocks when your energy is highest
batching similar tasks together to reduce switching
building simple routines that help you settle into focused work
taking genuine breaks away from screens to restore attention
If you're a Manager:
Meetings are often an essential part of management but they can come at a cost. Consider:
questioning whether a meeting is necessary
using asynchronous communication for updates and information sharing
being clear about purpose and desired outcome of every meeting
being mindful of interrupting colleagues' focus windows
creating realistic expectations around response times
protecting focus time as deliberately as meeting time
grouping meetings together to preserve larger blocks of uninterrupted time
The goal is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to ensure they support the work that needs to happen rather than constantly interrupt it.
Bottom line
Meetings can be a double-edged sword.
They help us connect and collaborate. But when they dominate the day, they leave little room for the deep thinking, problem-solving and focused work.
Deep work rarely happens in the gaps in between. It requires time, space and uninterrupted attention.
If this article resonates, it may be time to start a conversation about how meetings are affecting people's ability to do their best work.
Take care of you.
If something about the way you're working isn't working, I can help.
Together, we can explore what's getting in the way of you doing your best work and identify practical ways to improve focus, reduce distractions and work more sustainably.
References and further reading
Graham, P. (2009). Maker's schedule, manager's schedule. PaulGraham.com. https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Hari, J. (2022). Stolen focus: Why you can't pay attention—and how to think deeply again. Crown
Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181.
Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 107–110.
Microsoft (2025). 2025 Annual Work Trend Index. Microsoft. https://news.microsoft.com/annual-work-trend-index-2025/
Rock, D. (2020). Your brain at work: Strategies for overcoming distraction, regaining focus, and working smarter all day long (Rev. ed.). HarperCollins.
Uncapher, M.R., & Wagner, A.D. (2018) Minds and brains of media multitaskers: Current findings and future directions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(40), 9889–9896.
