We need to talk about meetings

How meetings sabotage productivity and ways we can combat it

Have you noticed how hard it is to concentrate these days? You sit down to work only to find yourself interrupted by a message on Teams, due in a meeting, distracted by your inbox or a notification on your phone. At the end of the day, despite being busy, you feel you've got nothing done.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone – and it’s not your fault.

According to Microsoft’s 2025 Workplace Trends report 68% of workers say they don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time during their workday and the average employee spends two thirds of their time in meetings, their inbox or chat messages.

Our ability to focus and get things done has not mysteriously disappeared.

Modern work practices are creating an environment that is hostile to deep work. Constant task switching due to non-stop digital interruptions is eroding concentration.

6 ways task switching impairs concentration

1. Attention residue

Whenever we start something new without completing something else, we create what might be considered an ‘open loop’ in the brain. This causes thoughts about the earlier activity to persist in the mind, even though we're now focused on something else (Leroy, 2009).

Termed ‘attention residue’, these thoughts interfere with our ability to concentrate on the new task, as part of our attention is snagged on something else.

2. Brain drain

The brain runs on oxygen and glucose. Every time we switch task, draws from this limited energy reserve. The more we switch, the faster we use it up. Eventually, we hit a point where clear thinking becomes difficult, if not impossible.

Once that mental energy is depleted, no amount of coffee will bring it back. 

What your brain really needs is a proper break that allows it to rest and refuel.

3. Crushed creativity

New ideas about a subject or solutions to a problem generally come when we take a break from thinking. When we allow the mind to wander, we give the brain the chance to consolidate disparate ideas and come up with novel ones. The infamous 'aha! moment'.

Switching tasks when we feel fidgety (checking your inbox or scrolling on social media) or stopping work to attend a meeting, prevents any form of creative break from happening.

4. Lost time

Time between tasks can add up, especially as we tend to get sidetracked by something else on our way back to the original piece of work. Some studies say it can take as long as 23 minutes to return to the original task (Mark et al., 2008).

On top of this, each time we go back to the interrupted work, we have to remember what we were doing and what we thought about it, before we can get going again.

5. Mental overwhelm

Repeated task-switching can provoke a state of ongoing distraction, worry and overwhelm. This raises blood pressure and levels of stress hormones making it harder to concentrate.

Constant meetings or other interruptions can also have the knock-on effect of feeling like you have to work at pace and/or work longer to get the task done. Over time, this can cause us to become disengaged or need time off due to stress/burnout.

6. Quality issues

Frequent task-switching is known to negatively impact working memory which hinders our ability to think well and produce error-free work.

This means when you do finally get back to work, rather than thinking deeply about what you’re working on, you end up spending your time (and mental energy) correcting things.

Meetings: the biggest culprit

By far the greatest thief of focus time is meetings. Since 2020, when COVID19 made online meetings the norm, the number of meetings has tripled.

Once only used for strategic planning, meetings are now a default form of communication; even five minute chats have become calendar invites.

The average employee spends about 11 hours a week in meetings – almost a third of the working week. Half of us attend 3 or more meetings every day.

Meetings are becoming the greatest thief of focus time

The maker-manager mismatch

A major reason meetings steal our capacity to get work done comes down to when they happen.

More than half of all meetings occur when many of us are at our most productive - between 09:00-11:00hrs and 13:00-15:00hrs (Microsoft, 2025).

This problem stems from the lack of recognition that managers and makers work in fundamentally different ways (Graham, 2009).

Managers troubleshoot issues and check on progress by having meetings. Work diaries and meeting apps are designed for this, offering hour-long appointment slots. As meetings are how they fulfil their role, the rhythm of back to back meetings suits them.

Makers – researchers, report writers, analysts, programmers, designers, engineers – do not schedule work this way. Technical work requires deep thinking. To solve problems, create or design things, Makers need long, uninterrupted blocks of time.  

Nothing meaningful can be achieved in random hours sprinkled across a week.

When Makers drop everything to attend a meeting, not only is the time lost that could be spent on task but momentum and cognitive clarity too. Makers tell me they're also less likely to start anything ambitious, if a meeting breaks up what could have been a productive morning or afternoon.

This maker-manager difference creates tension between oversight and output.

Makers can resent the constant interruptions, feeling that their needs are not important. Managers may not realise that their check-ins unintentionally sabotage delivery.

Unless an organisation recognises that makers work best when left alone to focus, the managers’ way becomes the norm with meetings dropped in calendars at any time of day.

How to reclaim your productivity

If you're finding yourself in meetings, often interrupted and unable to get work done,

here are some ways to reclaim your time, energy and focus.

Personal Strategies

• Batching: reduce task switching by deciding what you need to do and batch similar tasks together.

• Time blocking: schedule focused work for when your brain is most alert and tell others not to disturb you. I regularly block out 09:00-11:00 and 14:00-16:00.

• Get in the zone: develop a routine that to help yourself settle down and focus.

• Digital hygiene: disable notifications, use focus tools like Freedom, Flow or Forest. Leave your phone where you can’t access it.

• Work in pulses: work with your brain’s natural concentration and consolidation cycles (circa 90-minute focus blocks).

• Take restorative breaks: when you take a break, limit inputs and do things that help to replenish your attentional resources.

• Train your attention: practice working without getting distracted. Start small (25 minute time chunks) and work up to longer sprints.

• Try binaural beats: studies on binaural beats suggest that alpha frequency beats (8-13Hz) may improve concentration by promoting a relaxed yet alert brain state. Search on youtube

• Set times to process your inbox: interrupting focus time to drop by your inbox drains your brain as there’s always something to do or decide. Set specific times to process emails; for me, it’s 11:30 and 16:30.

Team and Organisational Shifts

• Focus-friendly norms: allocate “deep work” hours and promote no-meeting times.

• Meeting audits: reduce unnecessary meetings and insist on agendas.

• Asynchronous communication: provide guidance on when to use which digital channel and use them in ways that don’t demand instant replies.

• Psychological safety: empower people to protect their focus without guilt.

Summary

Your ability to concentrate hasn’t disappeared, it is being compromised by interruptions whilst you work. The obvious one being meetings, especially badly timed ones, most likely caused by the maker-manager mismatch.

Reclaiming your focus requires intentional personal practices and designing your day for deep work. At the same time, organisations need to rethink how and why we meet.

By designing working practices that support cognitive functioning and wellbeing, we can protect our concentration so we can get our work done.

Take care of you.

If this article resonated with you, share it with a colleague and use it to start a conversation.

If you're ready to rethink how you work so you focus better and feel less stressed, let's have a chat. Book a call to explore how I could be a resource to you.

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.