Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / The Hidden Cost of Meeting Overload
Transcript
- Lucas: Look at your calendar for next week. I mean really look at it, not just the big red blocks but the gray slivers between them. Most people I know are sitting on an average of twenty-five to thirty hours of meetings per week, which is basically a full-time job where you don't actually do the work. Luna: Right, and the worst part is that half those meetings could have been an email, yet everyone feels compelled to show up on camera anyway. Lucas: Exactly. And it creates this phenomenon called attention residue, which is a term coined by Sophie Leroy at the University of Washington. When you jump from a status update to a project deep dive, your brain doesn't instantly switch gears; it stays stuck on the previous task for about twenty minutes while it clears the cache. Luna: So if you have back to back calls, you're essentially operating with a fractured attention span all day long. Lucas: Precisely. You might be physically present in the Zoom room, but cognitively you're still trying to finish the last sentence of the previous call. This isn't just annoying; it's structurally inefficient. We've normalized this fragmentation as the cost of doing business, but it's actually destroying our capacity for complex problem solving. Luna: It feels like we've traded depth for visibility. Being seen in meetings has become more important than being effective outside of them. Lucas: That's a sharp observation. Visibility is cheap; depth is expensive. In a lot of tech companies, especially around September twenty twenty-six, there's this pressure to maintain constant connectivity because leadership assumes that if you're not responding instantly, you're not working hard enough. Luna: But response speed isn't a proxy for output quality. If I spend four hours writing a strategic plan versus four hours attending four one-hour syncs, which one actually moves the needle? Lucas: Obviously the plan. But the plan doesn't show up on your LinkedIn activity feed or get logged in the company directory. So managers default to the visible activity. It's a lazy metric because measuring actual output requires trust and clear goals, which are harder to manage than just counting headcount in a conference room. Luna: So the system is rigged against deep work because deep work is hard to measure in real time. Lucas: Exactly. And this leads to what I call the participation tax. You pay a tax in energy every time you attend a meeting that doesn't require your specific expertise. You sit there, you nod, you take notes, and by the time you leave, you have less bandwidth for the actual creative or analytical work you were hired to do. Luna: I had a client who was losing three hours a day to mandatory stand-ups that lasted forty-five minutes. She started asking for written updates instead and reclaimed that time for coding. Lucas: That's a great example. Written updates are asynchronous, which means they respect the recipient's time. The receiver can read them when they want, at their own pace, without the social pressure of interrupting someone mid-sentence. It shifts the burden from the speaker to the reader, but usually in a much more efficient way. Luna: But not everyone likes writing. Some people prefer talking it out to clarify their thoughts before committing to text. Lucas: True, and that's why not every meeting should be eliminated. But we need to distinguish between collaborative brainstorming, which benefits from live interaction, and information dissemination, which should almost always be async. The problem is that most corporate meetings are just information dumping disguised as collaboration. Luna: So the first step is auditing your calendar and asking: does this person need my eyes right now, or do they just need my brain later? Lucas: Spot on. And if it's just eyes, decline. If it's brain, schedule it for a focused block. I recommend using something called theme days. Instead of having a chaotic mix of meetings and tasks every single day, you assign themes to specific days. Mondays are for planning and emails, Tuesdays and Thursdays are for deep work, and Wednesdays are for internal meetings. Luna: That sounds rigid though. What happens when an urgent issue comes up on a deep work day? Lucas: Urgent issues are rare. Most things that feel urgent are actually just loud. By establishing a protocol where non-critical interruptions wait until the next available window, you train your colleagues to respect your boundaries. It takes about two weeks for people to adjust, and then suddenly you have a reputation for being focused and reliable rather than distracted and reactive. Luna: It also reduces anxiety. Knowing that you have protected time means you stop checking your phone every five minutes wondering if something missed you. Lucas: Right. The constant context switching is what drains your battery. When you know you won't be interrupted until Thursday morning, you can enter a flow state. Flow states are where the high-value work happens. You solve problems faster, make fewer errors, and you actually enjoy your job again. Luna: Which brings us to the bigger picture. If we fix the calendar, do we fix the burnout? Lucas: We fix a huge chunk of it. Burnout often comes from feeling like you're running on a treadmill that never stops. Reclaiming your time gives you a sense of agency. You're no longer a passive participant in other people's agendas; you're the architect of your own day. Luna: That sense of control is psychologically vital. It's not just about getting more done; it's about feeling like you own your labor. Lucas: Exactly. And here's a practical tip: start small. Don't try to overhaul your entire week tomorrow. Just block out two hours on Friday for deep work. Tell your team, 'I'm offline from two to four PM.' See how it feels. Notice the drop in stress. Then add another block next week. Luna: It's a compound interest effect. Small changes in how you structure time lead to massive gains in mental clarity over months. Lucas: Well said. Before we wrap up, I want to mention something personal. A handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these shows. It keeps us independent and ad-free. Luna: Yeah, it means we can keep digging into topics like this without worrying about advertiser approval. If that resonates, check out the link below. Lucas: Anyway, back to the core idea. The goal isn't to eliminate all meetings, but to make every minute count. If a meeting doesn't have a clear agenda and a defined outcome, cancel it. Your future self will thank you. Luna: Agreed. Treat your attention like the scarce resource it is, because it really is. Lucas: So the question for you this week is simple: what is one meeting you can cancel, delegate, or convert to an email? Who loses if you don't attend? Luna: If the answer is nobody, then you probably don't need to be there. Lucas: Exactly. Start auditing. Protect your focus. And remember, the most valuable thing you bring to your job isn't your availability; it's your thinking. Luna: Thanks for listening. See you next time.