We need to talk about meetings

How meetings can 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 due in a meeting, interrupted by a message on Teams or Slack, distracted by your inbox, or a notification on your phone. Despite being busy, at the end of the day, you feel like you've got nothing done.

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

According to Microsoft’s (2025) latest 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.

Your ability to concentrate has not mysteriously disappeared.

It is being taken away by modern work practices. Constant digital interruptions and back-to-back meetings have created an environment that is hostile to deep work and disrupts concentration.

6 ways task switching impairs concentration

1. Attention residue

Whenever we start a new activity without completing a prior one, 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 are 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—its essential fuel. Every time we switch tasks, draws from a limited energy reserve. The more we switch, the faster we burn through that reserve. Eventually, we hit a point where clear thinking becomes difficult, if not impossible.

N.B. once that mental energy is depleted, no amount of coffee will bring it back. What your brain really needs is a proper break—something restorative to reset and refuel.

3. Crushed creativity

New ideas about a subject or solutions to a problem generally come when we take a break from thinking. Times when we allow the mind to wander 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 maybe by checking your inbox or scrolling on social media or spending time in a meeting prevents any form of creative break from happening.

4. Lost time

Time between tasks can add up, especially as we often get sidetracked on our way back to the original task. Some studies say it can take as long as 23 minutes (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 distraction, worry and overwhelm. This raises blood pressure and the levels of stress hormone 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 later to get the task done. Over time, this can cause someone to become disengaged or need time off work for 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.

The average employee now 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.

What were once strategic planning tools have become a default form of communication; even five minute chats have become calendar invites.

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 their timing.

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

Makers – researchers, 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 their momentum and cognitive clarity too. Makers tell me they are 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 start to resent the constant interruptions, feeling that their needs are not important. Managers may not understand that their check-ins are unintentionally sabotaging delivery.

Unfortunately, unless an organisation realises 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

Are you 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 10:00-12:30 and 15:00-17:30.

• Get in the zone: develop a consistent routine 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 resource.

• 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 12:30 and 17:30.

Team and Organisational Shifts

• Focus-friendly norms: allocate “deep work” hours and promote no-meeting times, enable shared calendars

• Meeting audits: reduce unnecessary meetings, clarify agendas.

• Asynchronous communication: develop guidance on when to use communication tools 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 non-stop 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 or use it to start a conversation.

Want to better structure your day so you can focus better and feel less tired? Organise a no-obligation chat to discuss how working with me can help. You can tell me what you need assistance with and I can share how I might 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.