The Meeting Singularity

It starts as a classic sysadmin trap. I was assigned to five projects at the same time… At first glance, you tell yourself, “Busy… but manageable.”. After all, spinning up infrastructure and automating pipelines for multiple environments is just part of the job.

But then comes the calendar takeover.

Each project came with its own meetings. Suddenly, your schedule is completely packed from morning to evening. The deep-work time you need to write actual code is rapidly replaced by a wall of colored blocks representing a status meeting, a sync call, an alignment meeting, and a steering committee. You find yourself staring at your screen, muttering, “When do I actually work?”.

The peak absurdity usually hits mid-afternoon. You log into a video call titled “Meeting to Plan Other Meetings”. When the facilitator unironically kicks things off with, “Let’s align on how we’ll align,” all you can do is stare deadpan into the webcam.

At some point, you just have to stop. You look over at your dark terminal, untouched all day, and realize there is no time left to do the actual job.

When meetings replace work, productivity disappears.