The “Quick Catch-Up” That Ate Tuesday
You accept a “15-minute sync.” Forty-five minutes later, nothing is decided, your to-do list grew, and your brain feels chewed up. On paper, you “lost” an hour. In reality, you lost the hour plus the energy for the next three.
Meetings don’t just steal time. They steal focus, motivation, and momentum — the stuff that actually ships work.
The Great Time-Management Lie
We’ve been told to manage minutes. The pros manage energy. Time is fixed; energy is the part you can protect, invest, and rebuild.
That empty “quick catch-up”? It didn’t cost sixty minutes. It contaminated the next 180 with distraction and fatigue. Your calendar shows green blocks; your brain shows battery 10% and dropping.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not broken. You’re in a system that treats your attention like a free buffet.
The Vampire Meeting Checklist
If a meeting drains you, it usually ticks one (or several) of these boxes:
- No clear decision to make
- No agenda (or the agenda is “vibe”)
- Could have been an email / doc comment
- Same 2–3 people talk, nothing moves
- Ends with “great chat!” and no owner / next step
One of those a week is annoying. A dozen a week is energy anaemia.
Attention Residue: The After-Cost No One Schedules
Pointless meetings leave residue — the mental lint that sticks to your brain after context-switching. You close the call, stare at your doc, and… nothing. So you scroll, wander, or make a coffee you didn’t want. That’s not laziness; it’s recovery.
If you stacked three meetings, you stacked three recoveries. Your calendar didn’t budget for any of them.
Deep Work or Dead Work
Your best work needs unbroken time. Flow rarely shows up between 11:00–11:25 and 12:10–12:40. Scatter enough short meetings through the day and you never cross the runway — you just taxi in circles.
Want the manual? Try:
- Deep Work — Cal Newport (why focus is rare and how to defend it)
- The Power of Full Engagement — Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz (energy > time)
The One-Meeting Experiment (minimum effective dose)
Don’t fix the whole culture. Run an experiment.
- Triage one meeting this week
Ask before accepting:
- What decision will be made?
- What’s my role?
- Could this be async (doc, Loom, Slack thread)?
If you can’t answer, decline or propose async.
- Protect the reclaimed slot
Block it as Deep Work or Project Focus. Treat it like a client meeting: camera-off, notifications-off, door-shut. - Audit the energy, not just the time
After every meeting for a week, rate energy 1–10 before and after. You’ll spot the regular drains fast. Those are your next decliners/async converts.
Low-stakes targets to start with: weekly “check-ins” that never decide, status updates without owners, brainstorms with no brief or follow-up doc.
Practical Scripts (steal these)
- Decline / move to async:
“What decision are we making on this call? If it’s status only, I’ll add updates in the doc and review others there.” - Shorten + focus:
“Can we time-box to 20 minutes and decide X/Y by the end? I’ll capture owners + next steps.” - Protect deep work:
“I’m heads down on delivery 10–12. If urgent, ping me; otherwise I’ll review the thread at noon.”
No speeches. No apologies. Calm. Boring. Effective.
Team-Level Upgrades (when you’ve got influence)
- Default to docs → discussion in comments; meet only to decide.
- Agenda = question (“What decision are we making?”).
- Owner + next step on every item, or it doesn’t go on the agenda.
- No-meeting blocks for everyone (e.g., 9–11 Tue/Thu).
- One meeting in, one meeting out rule for new recurring slots.
Watch cynicism fall when meetings consistently do something.
Tools That Actually Help
- Deep Work — Cal Newport
- The Power of Full Engagement — Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz
- A simple planner/notebook for your energy audit + deep-work blocks
- (You don’t need a new system. You need fewer bad meetings and more defended focus.)
Final Squeeze
Your calendar is not a democracy. Every invitation is a request for your most precious resource — your energy. Start saying no to dead work so you can say yes to the work that matters. One declined meeting. One protected block. Rinse. Repeat.
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