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How Useless Meetings Are Burning You Out
Description
Episode 40 of The Burnout Podcast tackles a workplace epidemic that rarely gets the burnout label: useless meetings. Lucas and Luna break down a specific recent survey of 1,000 US office workers that found the average professional spends 7.8 hours per week in meetings they consider unnecessary or poorly run — that's nearly a full workday burned every week. They explore the psychological cost of 'meeting recovery time,' the compounding effect of calendar fragmentation, and why even short check-ins can drain your cognitive reserves. They also debate two real-world experiments: one from a mid-size tech company that instituted a 'no internal meetings Wednesday' policy, and another from a marketing agency that capped all internal meetings at 15 minutes. The hosts offer concrete strategies for reclaiming your calendar — including the 'meeting cost clock' trick and the 'agenda-or-autodecline' rule. If you've ever ended a day feeling exhausted yet accomplished nothing, this episode will help you name the problem and start fixing it.