We do this to ourselves first thing every day even though it’s been shown in studies that the start of the day is when you’re at your most productive.

Let’s have 5 of these on a row during the most productive hours of the day between 8 and 12. Then have lunch were we share hilarious anecdotes and after that we feel too bleh to do our job. We will just sit around the office and talk more bull shit and then go home. Too bad we told Mrs x we will do y, who cares?

Sounds perfect doesn’t it.

In my previous job, I was asked to break focus every 15 minutes to check my email and see if one of my coworkers was falling behind on dealing with a queue of tasks, then pitch in if he was. I hated the job in general, but that in particular just ruined any possibility of productivity. Hard for anyone, near impossible for someone with ADHD. Then I got blamed for falling behind on my work. And for being disorganized (we didn’t have a ticket tracker, hmmm).

Yup, and getting older makes it harder to catch up to that damn train of thoughts after that useless ass meeting interrupted them.

Don’t forget the loss of productivity in the hours before the meeting, spent worrying about it.

Meetings are part of the productive time.