Your Calendar Is Lying to You (And You Know It)

📅 Your Calendar Is Lying to You (And You Know It)

Open your calendar.
Now ask yourself: “How many of these meetings are actually helping me do better work?”

If your gut says, maybe one or two, you’re not alone.
The rest? Likely time-sucking, energy-draining, productivity theater.

We’re living in the golden age of meeting bloat — and most of us are too polite (or too exhausted) to call it out.

📉 The Cost of Always Being in a Meeting

Every unnecessary meeting:

• Fractures your focus

• Delays real work

• Makes every other meeting worse

Worse yet, we’ve normalized this. We wear it like a badge:

“I’ve been in meetings all day.”

That’s not a flex. That’s a red flag.

✂️ Try a Calendar Cleanse

Here’s your antidote: a meeting detox.

For the next 30 days, ask one hard question before accepting any invite:

“What is this meeting’s job — and could another format do it better?”

If there’s no agenda? Decline.
If you’re only there to listen? Ask for a summary.
If it’s status updates? Use a shared doc or Slack thread.

You don’t owe your time to tradition.
You owe it to your energy.

🤖 Let AI Take the First Draft

If you're worried you'll miss something by skipping the meeting, let AI help:

Try prompts like:

• “Turn this Zoom transcript into a 3-bullet summary with key takeaways.”

• “Draft an email recap based on this meeting note to share with my team.”

Meetings should be where decisions are made — not where productivity goes to die.

🧠 The Real Shift: From Attendance to Intent

The goal isn’t to cancel every meeting.
It’s to make the ones you do attend matter more.

That means fewer people in the room.
Shorter agendas.
Clearer outcomes.
And more space in your day to actually do the work.

Because here’s the truth:

Being in a meeting is not the same as making progress.