We need to talk about meetings

How meetings are quietly sabotaging focus - and what to do about it

How much uninterrupted focus time did you have yesterday at work? Like most people, you probably sat down to work, only for the interruptions to begin.

A Teams message. A calendar reminder. A quick look at your inbox that turned into a 20-minute distraction. Another meeting. By the end of the day, you've been busy...but nothing meaningful is finished.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone and it’s not a personal failing.

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.

Why interruptions are so damaging

Every time your attention is pulled away from the task at hand, whether it’s a message, an email, or a meeting, your brain has to switch context.

It might feel harmless, but cognitively it’s expensive.

Here are six ways that constant switching affects your ability to think clearly and work well:

1. Attention residue

When you switch tasks without completing something, your brain leaves an “open loop.”

Part of your attention stays stuck on what you were doing before (Leroy, 2009).

This ‘attention residue’, makes it harder to fully focus on what's next.

>Part of your attention is always left behind.

2. Crushed creativity

New ideas or solutions to a problem generally happen when the mind has time to wander. The famous 'aha! moment'.

When your day is filled with back to back meetings and digital messaging, that space disappears.

>No space = no “aha” moments.

3. Energy drain

The brain has a finite amount of energy available at any one time. Each time we switch task, draws from that reserve as we reorient and refocus. The more frequently you switch, the faster it depletes and thinking becomes much harder. >It's not just time you lose in switching, its cognitive capacity.

4. Lost time

Interruptions don't just pause your work, they delay your return to it.

Some research studies have found it can take as long as 23 minutes to get back to work after a disruption (Mark et al., 2008).

>A short meeting can cost far more than its duration.

5. Mental overwhelm

Constant switching keeps the brain in a heightened state of alert.

Over time, this drives stress, reduces concentration, and creates a sense of always being "behind".

>You feel busy, but not effective.

6. Reduced quality

Frequent task-switching and interruptions affect working memory, making errors more likely.

When you do return to task, more energy often goes into correcting than creating.

>The standard of your work starts to slip.

Meetings: the biggest thief of focus

Distractions and switching tasks clearly impact attention but meetings amplify these effects. 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 how they fragment the day. Meetings don't just take up time, they break it into pieces too small to do meaningful work.

Meetings are becoming the greatest thief of focus time

The maker-manager mismatch

A major reason meetings erode our ability to get things done comes down to when they happen.

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. Work diaries and meeting apps are designed for this, offering hour-long appointment slots by default. Meetings are how they fulfil their responsibilities, 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 do meaningful work.

Coaching clients regularly tell me that when a meeting interrupts a potential focus window, they're less likely to start anything and instead do small tasks, until the meeting occurs.

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.

How to reclaim focus

If you're feeling constantly interrupted and unable to get meaningful work done, the answer isn't to try harder or become more 'resilient'.

It's to reduce fragmentation. That happens at two levels:

Personal working practices

Support your brain to do the kind of work your role requires. For many people that means:

• grouping similar tasks together to reduce switching

• protecting 1-2 hour blocks for focused work when energy is highest

• creating simple routines that help you settle into work

• taking breaks away from screens to genuinely restore attention

Different strategies work for different people depending on role, workload and constraints and they only work when the surrounding culture allows them to.

Team and organisational shifts

Individual effort only goes so far if the environment stays the same.

Focus and productivity improves most when teams:

• are clearer about when meetings are truly needed

• set realistic expectations around response times.

• use asynchronous communication where possible.

• are actively enabled to protect focus time.

Without this, people are left trying to concentrate despite how work is organised.

Bottom line

Your ability to concentrate hasn’t disappeared

It is being compromised by modern work practices. Meetings, especially badly timed ones, are often the biggest factor.

Reclaiming focus isn't about doing more when you're already stretched. It's about designing work in a way that supports how the brain actually functions.

When we do that, productivity tends to improve naturally. Without the need for longer hours or more effort.

Take care of you.

If something about work isn't working, I can help. My coaching programmes are designed to help you stress less, focus better and have more energy. Get in touch to arrange a time to talk 

Alternatively, if you're not looking for 1:1 support, you are always welcome to subscribe to Mental Wealth Tips below for monthly insights on sustainable working.

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.