If you’re a developer spending more time in meetings than in your code editor, something’s broken. Your most valuable asset isn’t the latest framework or the fastest laptop, it’s uninterrupted time for deep, focused work. And yet, we keep letting our calendars get destroyed by back-to-back meetings that turn our days into useless fragments.
Let’s fix that.
Why Focus Time Actually Matters
Most developers need at least two to four solid blocks of focused work to get anything meaningful done. Not 30-minute chunks between meetings. Not an hour here and there. Real, deep focus where you can load the problem into your brain, think through solutions, and actually build something.
Meetings fragment your day into these pathetic little windows where deep focus is impossible. You’ve got 30 minutes until your next call. What are you going to do? You can’t dive into that complex refactoring. You can’t debug that weird production issue. So you end up doing surface-level stuff. Answering emails, reviewing a simple PR, maybe organizing your desktop for the third time this week.
And the worst part? Once that meeting’s over, you can’t just jump back in. Context switching isn’t instant. It takes time to reload all that mental state, to remember where you were, to get back into the flow. If you’ve got another meeting in an hour? Forget it. You’re basically treading water all day.
By the time the day’s over, you look at what you accomplished and think, “What the hell did I even do today?” The answer: you survived a bunch of meetings. That’s it.
The Real Problem: You’re Letting It Happen
Here’s the thing that might sting a bit: a lot of this is within your control. Yeah, workplace culture pushes meetings on us. Yeah, there’s pressure to be a “team player” and show up to everything. But you control your response to meeting requests. You control your calendar defaults. You control your willingness to advocate for your own productivity.
And most of us? We’re not doing nearly enough of that advocating.
We accept every meeting invite like it’s mandatory. We don’t question whether we actually need to be there. We don’t suggest alternatives. We just show up, zone out, and watch our productive time vanish.
That needs to stop.
What You Can Actually Do About It
Learn to say no. Not every meeting needs you. Really. Practice declining optional meetings without guilt. If someone wants your input, maybe they can send you a doc to review instead. Maybe someone else from your team can attend and fill you in later. You don’t have to be a body in every room.
Consolidate the unavoidable ones. If you’ve got meetings you actually need to attend, bunch them together. Try to get all your meetings on specific days or in specific blocks. Protect the rest of your time like it’s sacred. Because for your actual work, it is.
Set up defenses. Block off focus time on your calendar. Put it in writing: “Deep Focus – Do Not Schedule.” Set your Slack status to let people know you’re in deep thought and can’t be interrupted. Make it visible that you’re unavailable and why.
Push for alternatives. A lot of meetings can be documents, recorded videos, or Slack threads. When someone proposes a meeting, ask yourself: does this really need to be synchronous? Could we handle this with a well-written doc instead? Advocate for async when it makes sense.
Do the math. Here’s a useful exercise: calculate the true cost of meetings. Take the number of people, multiply by their hourly rate, multiply by meeting length. Suddenly that casual 1-hour meeting with 8 people costs your company $4,000. This builds conviction around declining low-value gatherings. When there’s no agenda and it’s just reacting to whatever comes up, you end up sitting there thinking, “Why am I here?” That’s an expensive question to be asking.
Lead By Example
When you organize meetings, show people how it should be done:
Make them optional when possible. If people don’t need to be there, tell them. Give them permission to skip.
Share agendas beforehand. People should know what they’re walking into and whether they actually need to attend.
End early if the work is done. Just because you scheduled an hour doesn’t mean you have to take the hour. Get it done in 40 minutes? Great. Give people back their time. They’ll appreciate the hell out of it.
Question whether it needs to happen at all. Before you send that meeting invite, ask yourself: could this be an email? A quick Slack message? A shared doc with comments? If the answer’s yes, don’t schedule the meeting.
The Reality of Development Work
Here’s what non-developers often don’t get: programming isn’t just typing code. A huge part of it is thinking. You need time to load the problem into your brain, understand the context, think through edge cases, consider different approaches. That takes uninterrupted time.
When you’re jumping from meeting to meeting, that deep thinking becomes impossible. You’re constantly in reactive mode, never in creative mode. You can’t test properly. You can’t debug effectively. You can’t architect solutions. You’re just... treading water.
So when you tell your manager or your team that you need meeting-free days, you’re not being difficult. You’re not being antisocial. You’re advocating for the conditions you need to actually do your job well.
If you’ve got a day packed with meetings, fine – but understand that’s not a productive coding day. That’s a collaboration day, a planning day, a face-time day. Which is sometimes necessary! But you still need other days where you can actually build things. Where you can think. Where you can do the work you were hired to do.
Making It Stick
Look, changing workplace culture around meetings isn’t easy. There’s going to be pushback. People are going to be confused when you start declining their invites. Managers might question why you’re not being a “team player.”
Your focus time isn’t a luxury. It’s how you do your actual job. Protecting it is professional, not selfish.
Start small. Block off a few hours a week. Decline one or two low-value meetings. See what happens. Chances are, nothing bad will happen. In fact, you’ll probably get more done, which makes everyone happy.
Then gradually expand. Build up to having full focus days. Train your team to respect those boundaries. Show them that you’re more valuable when you have time to think than when you’re a half-present body in every meeting.
Your calendar is yours to control. Your attention is yours to protect. Stop giving them away like they don’t matter.
Because they do.
Quote of the Day:
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” - Seneca
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