Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / The Burnout of Overpreparing for Meetings
Transcript
- Lucas: You know that feeling — you've got a thirty-minute status meeting at ten AM, and you've spent an hour and a half the night before building a slide deck with colour-coded progress bars, updated risk registers, and a summary table that nobody is going to read. Luna: Oh, I've been that person. I used to prep for a fifteen-minute stand-up like I was presenting to the board. Lucas: Right. And the research suggests this is incredibly common — and it's a real driver of burnout. A 2025 study from the University of North Carolina looked at how knowledge workers spend their time, and they found that the average professional spends about four point two hours per week preparing for recurring meetings that, in their own estimation, don't actually require that level of preparation. Luna: Four hours a week — that's half a workday. And that's just the prep time, not the meeting itself. Lucas: Exactly. And if you multiply that across a career, you're talking about weeks of unnecessary cognitive load. The study also found that the people who overprepare the most are often the ones who are already feeling the most burned out. It becomes this vicious cycle — you're exhausted, so you feel like you need to overprepare to compensate, which drains you further. Luna: So the overpreparation is almost a symptom of burnout itself, not just a cause. Lucas: I think that's a really sharp way to put it. And there's a specific case I came across that I want to talk about. A mid-sized tech consultancy — about three hundred people — they noticed that their project managers were logging huge amounts of overtime, and when they traced it, a lot of it came down to meeting prep. So they instituted something called a 'two-bullet max' rule for internal status updates. If you were meeting with your own team, you could bring no more than two bullet points of written preparation. Luna: Two bullets. That is terrifying for some people. But I bet it forced a really useful discipline. Lucas: That's exactly what happened. Within three months, they measured a forty percent reduction in meeting prep time across the affected teams. And — crucially — team members reported that the meetings themselves were actually more focused. The quality went up because people were thinking in real time instead of reading from a script they'd written the night before. Luna: There's something about that that feels deeply counterintuitive. We think more prep equals better outcomes, but in a collaborative setting, sometimes the opposite is true. Lucas: Yeah, and I think the psychology behind it is really interesting. There's a concept in performance psychology called 'overpreparation as anxiety management.' When you're anxious about being caught off guard, you prepare more. But the preparation itself becomes a way to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty, not a way to actually serve the meeting's purpose. Luna: So you're preparing to protect yourself, not to help the group move forward. Lucas: Right. And that's where it tips into burnout territory. Because you're doing all this invisible work that nobody asked for, and it's depleting your reserves for the work that actually matters. Luna: If today was useful to you — and I hope it is — you should know that the way we keep these episodes ad-free is through listener support. If you've ever gotten something out of our conversations, you can help keep them going at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small way to make a big difference for us. And we really appreciate every person who chips in. Luna: So back to the data — what else did the UNC study find about who's most at risk? Lucas: One of the more surprising findings was that it's not just junior people. Mid-career professionals — especially those in cross-functional roles — were the most likely to overprepare. The theory is that they have more stakeholders to anticipate, which creates a broader range of potential questions, and they feel responsible for being ready for all of them. Luna: That makes sense. I had a colleague once who managed a project that touched five different departments. She would spend entire Sundays building decks because she was trying to pre-empt every possible objection from every department head. Lucas: And the irony is that the more you try to pre-empt, the more you signal that you're uncertain. It can actually undermine the confidence that you're trying to project. Luna: So what do you do if you're in that cycle? How do you break it? Lucas: I think there are three practical things that come out of the research. First, set a hard time limit on prep. If you have a meeting at ten, give yourself fifteen minutes starting at nine forty-five — and no more. Second, ask the meeting organizer for a pre-read. If they can share an agenda or a document ahead of time, you can prepare more efficiently. And third — this one is harder — distinguish between preparation that serves the audience and preparation that serves your own anxiety. Luna: That third one is the one that takes practice. How do you even tell the difference? Lucas: One way is to ask yourself: 'If I had only thirty seconds to prepare, what would I bring?' Usually, the answer is a single key point or a question. Everything beyond that is often anxiety-driven. Another technique is to actually test your assumption — go to a meeting underprepared once and see what happens. Most people find that the world doesn't end. Luna: But that takes courage, especially if you're in a culture that rewards thoroughness. Lucas: It does. And I don't want to suggest that all preparation is bad. There are meetings that genuinely require deep prep — client pitches, board presentations, performance reviews. But the vast majority of internal meetings? They're coordination mechanisms. They're not performances. Luna: So the real skill is learning to treat them as coordination, not performance. Lucas: Exactly. And that shift — from performer to collaborator — is not just a time saver. It's an energy saver. And when you're trying to sustain a career over decades, energy management is the thing that matters most. Luna: I want to come back to the 'two-bullet max' idea. That seems so simple. Why don't more teams try that? Lucas: I think because it feels like a loss of control. Managers worry that without detailed prep, people won't be accountable. But the data from that consultancy actually showed the opposite — accountability went up because people had to speak more directly to what was happening now, not what they'd written last night. Luna: So it's a trust exercise as much as a time management tool. Lucas: Yes. And I think the broader lesson here is about rethinking what 'professionalism' looks like. We've been trained to equate preparation with competence. But sometimes, the most competent thing you can do is show up with a clear head and a willingness to think on your feet. Luna: That's a good note to end on. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna. Talk next time.