For managers, meetings are the job — their day is already chopped into hourly slots, so one more costs exactly one slot. But for anyone doing deep work (coding, writing, analysis), a 2pm meeting doesn't cost 30 minutes. It costs the whole afternoon: the morning is spent knowing it's coming, and real focus can't spin up in the fragments around it.
Two takeaways. If you do deep work: stop scattering meetings across your calendar and herd them to the edges of the day — one protected 4-hour block beats six free 40-minute gaps. If you're a manager: know that every "quick sync" you drop into someone's 2pm is way more expensive to them than to you. It’s often better to stack your asks against their existing meetings.
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